Hamilton did at least trim 10 points off his own deficit to Alonso after the
Ferrari driver failed to finish, but it was a challenging weekend all round
for the Woking-based team.
The race was the first since Hamilton’s move to Mercedes was confirmed and
that, understandably, was the major topic of paddock discussion, even
allowing for Michael Schumacher’s retirement announcement.
And he completed the weekend by taking Button to task on Twitter, having been
led to believe his team-mate had stopped following him on the social media
site.
In a series of tweets on his official feed, which has around 1.1 million
followers, Hamilton said: “Just noticed @jensonbutton unfollowed, thats
a shame. After 3 years as teammates, I thought we respected one another but
clearly he doesn’t.
“Funny thing is, we are STILL teammates! All good tho, I plan on giving
this team fans all I got til I cross the finish line in brazil!!!”
But the 27-year-old was left embarrassed when he realised Button did not
follow his Twitter account in the first place.
That led him to tweet: “My bad, just found out Jenson never followed me.
Don’t blame him! Need to be on Twitter more!”
Hamilton’s comments are unlikely to have impressed Button and could put a
strain on a working relationship that, while seen as being largely
harmonious, has been known to be tense.
Hamilton’s Twitter climbdown is not the first time he has mis-stepped on the
social networking site.
At the Belgian Grand Prix he posted a picture of the telemetry from his and
Button’s qualifying laps, which the team quickly told him to remove due to
the sensitive nature of the data, on that occasion Button said he was “disappointed”.
On the track things were not a great deal better. Having had the quickest car
at the previous four races, McLaren will have been concerned about how Red
Bull turned the tables to dominate in Japan.