On what happened during Lewis Hamilton's bad race start:
It was a procedural error - his engine was on the incorrect setting and that led to the anti-stall procedure kicking in, so he was swamped by everyone else as he tried to get away.On whether Hamilton has admitted that he forgot to press the right button:
Yes, but as a team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes doesn’t habitually blame its drivers in public. Is the procedure clear? Is it simple enough? We have to look at all the details.On how people are accustomed to celebrating Lewis’s successes, but this just wasn't his weekend, but he remains upbeat:
I think he’s disappointed, but he’s very strong-minded. He had a reasonable qualifying run, but a practice accident meant Friday wasn’t his greatest day, and nor was Sunday. He won’t lose confidence, though. He believes in himself and knows he can get the job done. He’ll go away, rebuild and come back stronger in Spain.On how Lewis ran into the back of Fernando Alonso's car:
It’s an interesting situation for those of us on the pit wall, because you see an incident such as that and have to respond in terms of pulling him in, getting the car repaired, looking at fuel load options that might help him recover and so on. At the time we didn’t actually know how it all unfolded, however. People come up immediately after the race and ask, "So, was he brake-tested?" and you can’t answer. It is assumed that you are being evasive, but in truth you simply don’t know. It was only when I went into the engineers’ room and started looking at the details that I realized Lewis’s upper front wing had disappeared about two seconds before the accident, so he suddenly lost downforce. We haven’t analyzed why that happened but we suspect the structure had been weakened by previous contact. To be fair to Lewis it could have broken of its own accord, but that has never happened before so contact is the most likely cause. There’s certainly no evidence that Fernando did anything wrong. The impact damaged other elements of Lewis’s car apart from the wing - he just had to cope as best he could.On how Heikki Kovalainen drove very well again, but his afternoon wasn’t entirely without problems:
For a reasonable proportion of the race his car was wounded by a very bad flat spot, after he locked up on the opening lap. By the time he pitted his front right tyre was worn down to the canvas. For his second stint, with hindsight, we were maybe on the wrong type of tyre, but we went long and heavy just to try something different. It didn’t benefit us, but there was no harm done either.Heikki set the fastest lap, which added a positive sheen but also underlined that we didn’t unleash the car’s full potential throughout the race. It’s a further illustration that you have to get every element of the weekend absolutely right.
