Heartbreak for Hamilton
Singapore, 23 Sept 2012: A gearbox failure caused Lewis Hamilton to retire from the lead of the Singapore Grand Prix.
Having made a smooth getaway from pole position, and keeping his lead intact through the first round of pitstops, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton slowed to a halt on lap 23 of the planned 61. Shots from his onboard camera clearly showing the Englishman struggling to select a gear. As a result of the DNF, Hamilton slipped for second to fourth in the Drivers’ World Championship table, on a day when he would have expected to make ground on leader Fernando Alonso.
“It’s heart-breaking not to have finished the race today,” said Hamilton afterwards. “But that’s motor racing. We had the pace this weekend, it was quite easy in the position we were in. I think it would have been a nice result for us – but we still have more races to go.”
After the race both Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel, who had been Hamilton’s closest challengers in Singapore, reported seeing oil leaking from the 2008 Champion’s gearbox. Hamilton later explained that inside the cockpit the problem was progressive, first loosing his seamless shift capacity, then losing third gear and final becoming stuck in neutral.
“I lost the [seamless] shift and it becomes quite an aggressive shift and so I told the team. They told me I should be able to see it to the end of the race – and then I lost third gear and then all the gears went.
“We really couldn’t afford that today – but it is what it is. The good thing is we have good pace. I have to go and win the next few races.”
Hamilton has been statistically unfortunate this season: his failures to score in 2012 have been the result of two collisions (Valencia and Spa) both judged by stewards to be the fault of the other driver, a puncture at Hockenheim, and today’s mechanical failure. It is his second major gearbox issue of the year having been demoted from second to seventh on the Shanghai grid for an unscheduled change.
McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh commiserated with his driver. “Until his run was curtailed by gearbox failure on lap 23, Lewis was driving towards what would have been the perfect end to a weekend throughout which his pace had been consistently awesome.
“There are six grands prix left to run this season – which equate to a potential 150 world championship points for any driver to score – and you should be in no doubt that Lewis will be aiming to get as close to that 150 target as possible.”
ends
