Asked what he was most looking forward to now, with Vettel having all but
secured the drivers’ title, Hamilton smiled. “Christmas,” he replied. “No, I
am looking forward to enjoying the next few races and getting some good
results. We have lost a lot of points to Ferrari and Lotus. We are the
second quickest team, so it is gutting for me to see all around us these
guys who work so hard here and at the factory.
“We have been unlucky. But it is OK, I am looking at it as if the glass is
half-full. Hopefully we will get all the bad luck out of the way now and
have a good year next year.”
Mercedes,
in third place, lie 10 points behind Ferrari in the constructors’
championship with Red Bull almost out of sight.
Hamilton absolved Vettel of any blame for the incident, adding that he would
have been unable to keep the Red Bulls at bay in any case. “My car feels
quick but their car is on another level at the moment,” he said.
Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, had an incident-filled race,
picking up a drive-through penalty after being released into the path of
McLaren’s Sergio Pérez at the first pit stop.
The German then accused the Mexican of “dangerous” driving as they battled for
eighth place late on. Contact between them left Pérez with a puncture,
dropping him to 15th while Rosberg came home eighth.
“Pérez was not right with what he did,” said Rosberg. “Definitely dangerous.
“The rules are clear. If you brake and you close the door then you have to
move out again. I was there and he didn’t leave space. So it was good he
punctured his tyre, which got him out of the way.”
Pérez’s misfortunes added to what has been a difficult debut season with
McLaren.
He put a different spin on events. “It was a very unfortunate afternoon,” he
said. “Everything that could go wrong did. The pit-lane, puncture, Nico.
Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.”
Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn said he would look into the incident.
“We’re normally a pretty reliable team in the pits,” he said, “and I don’t
fully understand what happened yet but we will investigate and take any
necessary actions,”