Lewis Hamilton has been told by his Mercedes team he wasn’t to blame for the poor start from pole position which cost him victory of the Italian GP. Nobody. Because if you start to blame people this is when it starts going downhill because people will try to protect their a*** and make sure they have a conservative system in place rather that putting the best developments on the auto. “We continue to have an inconsistency with our clutch”.
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“He is a fair racer and had seen me in the mirrors so I knew he wouldn’t turn in, so I had a go”.
“As I said you’ve seen it with Nico, you’ve seen it with me, quite a few times”. “It’s always going to be a great battle and I look forward to what’s to come”. “It’s a great day for Mercedes and I am glad to be a part of it, but I don’t know if it’s such a great day for the fans that there wasn’t more of us racing”.
Of course, he may not have won all of those races even with quick starts, but he has definitely left some points on the table. He is a fair racer and had seen me in the mirrors so I knew he wouldn’t turn in, so I had a go. I can assure you on Tuesday [in the factory] that’s the only thing we’ll be talking about, because everything else we’re doing really well.
Referring to the championship, in which there are seven races remaining, Rosberg said: “The race is on”.
“We are not struggling with pole positions, just getting off the line”.
Hamilton initially appeared to take the blame for the poor getaway over the team radio, but afterwards said he wasn’t actually sure what had happened.
“So, 2017 will be that and in 2018 the team have an option on me to race for McLaren-Honda which is pretty awesome”. But its just what happens, you have good starts and bad starts, and I think our system has improved a lot.
“Today we did the best we could and got the most out of the vehicle.” said Raikkonen “For sure we would have been more satisfied with the first row, but this is the maximum we could achieve”.
While Hamilton’s team publicly insisted his sluggish getaway was a combination of auto and driver, the Briton appeared more at fault.
He added: “We had a discussion about Singapore and why we were not competitive a year ago and we think we understood why”.
Ricciardo’s team-mate Max Verstappen was next up in seventh, recovering after slipping to P11 at the start after his auto went into anti-stall.
“I’m told it wasn’t driver error, I’m told it wasn’t anyone’s error”, he has been quoted as saying by respected journalist Adam Cooper.
“When you start to blame this is when it goes downhill because people will try to protect their arse and make sure they have a conservative system in place rather than putting the best development on the vehicle”.
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“We had the soft tyre on and the Ferraris [on the second row] had the super softs so they had a bit more grip but that worked out great”.
