McLaren has revealed that the decision to penalise
Lewis Hamilton for his overtaking move on
Sebastian Vettel at the French Grand Prix scuppered the team's ability to alter the Briton's race strategy as he attempted to recover from 13th on the grid.
The lowly starting position was already due to a penalty meted out after the Canadian Grand Prix, but McLaren was confident that it could help its championship hopeful back into the points - even if victory was out of the question - by making the right strategic calls. Even going into the final phase of qualifying, the team revealed that it had several options for Hamilton.
“We knew we could alternate between a two- or three-stop strategy," CEO Martin Whitmarsh confirmed, "For qualifying, we had hoped to put him on the front row, but ended up third. [But] even from 13th on the grid, we could have two- or three-stopped, depending on whether we could put him out in free air. In the end, we ran an enforced three-stop strategy due to his drive-through penalty - and that affected him strategically. After his penalty, he came out behind [Kazuki] Nakajima and, once he was past, became the fastest guy in the race."
Whitmarsh said that, while there had been discontent on the pit-wall when it was revealed that Hamilton was to be penalised, post-race reflection saw the team accept that it had maybe not had all the facts at its fingertips.
“Clearly, we were disappointed and frustrated at the time - everybody in the team had worked so hard over the past fortnight to enable us to go into this race with the best possible opportunity to overcome Lewis' ten-place grid penalty," he confessed, "On the pitwall, we were of the opinion that Lewis had made his pass before going wide at turn seven, but the lack of multiple camera angles covering the incident made it hard to judge accurately.
