Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen were handed penalties during Sunday’s French Grand Prix. While Hamilton was already serving his 10-place relegation on the starting grid, which came about after he shunted his car into Raikkonen’s Ferrari, when he was handed a ‘drive-through’ penalty for an apparent illegal overtaking maneuver over Sebastian Vettel’s Toro Rosso, early in the race.
Kovalainen had already been handed a 5-place grid penalty for supposedly blocking Mark Webber during qualification on Saturday. Both drivers were feeling rather hard-done-by after the decisions were handed out. McLaren Mercedes were visibly hounded by the FIA during the Spying scandals of the 2007 season and many believe that this careful scrutiny and harsh punishment have been somewhat un-just.
“A lot of people - and not McLaren personnel - are saying the FIA are more interested in finding faults at McLaren than at other teams,” said three-times former world champion Jackie Stewart.
“For example, in the French race, Kimi Raikkonen’s exhaust system broke and part of it was visibly hanging off the car. Why wasn’t he called into the pits to have the loose piece removed? That could have been the ‘make it happen’ moment of the race. Eventually the loose bodywork flew off the car, which could easily have been dangerous to the public or to another driver. Some people will say that if it had happened with a McLaren, the team would have been fined.”
However, Raikkonen has already been handed a drive-through penalty at the Monaco Grand Prix after it was deemed that Ferrari did not have his tyres fitted onto the car in the stipulated time-frame before the race.
Hamilton is getting the feeling that the entire worlds is ganged up against him. Not just stewards, the media also seem to be against the Brit who decided to take things into his own hands and launched an offensive at the press on Sunday.
Stewart believes that as far as Hamilton’s experience in the last few races is concerned, it is just a part of the learning curve for the 23-year old. Stewart added: “He’s now experiencing both the privilege and the penalty of celebrity. He’s excited the media so much, and now some people are starting to feel let down. But we should remember Lewis has only been in F1 for 15 months. He’s not the finished article yet, and it’s wrong to think he should be. He might not like to hear this, but he has a fundamental lack of experience at the top of the sport. If he asked for my advice, I’d say, ‘take your time, and don’t expect too much of yourself’. I know because I’ve been there myself. I had a big accident in my second year, which I was lucky to survive. Over the next few years I changed. I gained experience, which gave me knowledge, which in turn enabled me to deliver.”