Lewis Hamilton: Integrity is very important to me

Twelve months on from the most publicly embarrassing and even humiliating episode of his fledgling F1 career, Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he is approaching the forthcoming world championship campaign ‘in the happiest place I’ve ever been’ and adamant that he will never again fall prey to the kind of ignominy that blighted the start of his 2009 challenge. Hamilton was ostracised from the F1 family in the wake of the infamous Melbourne lies controversy last March, after he was caught out deliberately lying to race stewards in the wake of the Australian Grand Prix in Albert Park, in a bid to earn Toyota rival Jarno Trulli a penalty and thereby inherit the Italian’s third place – by fair means or foul. Forced into a grovelling apology in the full glare of the media spotlight a week later in Malaysia he might have been, but still the Briton refused to accept the blame, rather shifting it onto his team manager Dave Ryan by insisting that he himself had also been ‘misled’ – speciously seeming to argue that he had had no alternative but to meekly do as he was told, however immoral and dishonest that instruction might have been. Ryan was a convenient scapegoat, and parted company with McLaren-Mercedes shortly afterwards, in so doing bringing to a sorry and arguably unjustified end to a long and successful career in the top flight that had made the New Zealander one of the most widely-respected figures in the sport. For some time after the unsavoury incident Hamilton cast a forlorn and lonely figure in the paddock as he recoiled into his protective shell, clearly uncomfortable in the public eye – and he subsequently admitted that the spectacular fall-out from it had driven him to reconsider his place in the sport. No longer Britain’s golden boy off the back of his success in becoming F1′s youngest-ever world champion, with just a few words, the 25-year-old’s reputation had been sullied, some suggested irreversibly. Happily for him, whilst the lie will in all probability never be forgotten, it has since been forgiven, and the McLaren-Mercedes star enters F1 2010 and the curtain-raising Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir next weekend considered as one of the hot title favourites. Humility has made him stronger, and redemption, it seems, might yet be just around the corner. “There was a lot to take on-board after what had gone on,” he is quoted as…

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Posted by admin 8 March 2010

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