They are English and they are teammates. But any hope that Lewis Hamilton might have shared in the joy of the victory of teammate Jenson Button in the Australian Grand Prix is sadly forlorn.
As Button celebrated his success, Hamilton barely got his post-race champagne to fizz.
Button, the one-time prodigy who worked his way through six teams in 10 years before arriving in his present job at McLaren, worked his way through Hamilton in a fraction of a second at the start of Sunday’s race.
He kept going to win handsomely, relegating his clearly unimpressed teammate into third place and prompting a bout of the sulks.
Hamilton started the first Formula One race of the season as a pronounced favourite after setting the fastest qualifying time, but that advantage evaporated as the starting lights turned green.
Hamilton then chased Button valiantly for the next 37 laps, only to lose second place thanks to a tricky manoeuvre by Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel when the safety car came out.
Asked what had happened at the start, Hamilton replied that he wasn’t sure.
A further inquiry at the after-race media conference was met with a dismissive response and no-one bothered him again.
A lot more support for Button came from Vettel.
“Jenson completely deserved the win …. he totally deserved to win the race,” Vettel said.
Vettel also took a basic view of his own performance, suggesting his chance of success disappeared in Saturday’s qualifying.
“Sixth place on the grid was a disaster,” Vettel said.
“We were in the shit.”
Under the circumstances, Vettel and his teammate, Australia’s Mark Webber, who started in fifth and finished fourth, did extremely well.
In a sport where the first 100 metres is more important than almost any of the subsequent 300 kilometres, Vettel did to Webber what Button did to Hamilton.
Webber, who once again fluffed the start, blamed an “over-engaged” clutch.
“The result’s okay,” Webber said.
“The performance? I could have had any result today if we performed better at certain periods – ie: the first lap.
“It was like a boxer … shit first round, then we finished off well.”
With luck, he’ll get it right when he lines up for his 178th GP in Malaysia next weekend.
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