Formula 1 News

Hamilton confident on beating Ferrari 

Lewis Hamilton says McLaren will do their utmost to beat Ferrari in the Italian team’s home race this weekend as the perfect riposte to allegations of spying against the Formula One leaders. “Beating Ferrari on their home ground has got to be a huge blow to their whole team and that would make my team extremely happy,” the 22yr old championship leader told British reporters at Monza.

“For me it would be a great feeling to do that because of what they are putting (our) team through. I know my team, I know the people here and I think we are being unfairly treated. We’ll do our talking on the track,” added the Briton.

Hamilton leads double world champion teammate Fernando Alonso by five points with five races remaining. Ferrari’s Brazilian Felipe Massa is third, 10 points behind Spaniard Alonso, with Kimi Raikkonen a further point adrift.

Ferrari won the previous Turkish Grand Prix, with Massa leading Raikkonen in a one-two finish, and have been triumphant four times in the last five years at Monza. They are now just 11 points behind McLaren in the constructors’ championship.

McLaren are due to appear before the world governing body in Paris on Thursday in a hearing that could wreck their championship hopes if new evidence shows they benefited from Ferrari technical information in the possession of suspended chief designer Mike Coughlan earlier in the season. The team have denied incorporating any Ferrari data on their car and escaped sanction in July when the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) ruled there was insufficient evidence. However, the FIA World Motor Sport Council warned then that the team could be kicked out of this and next year’s championship if new evidence emerged against them. The FIA said on Wednesday there was new evidence and the Monza paddock has been swept by speculation about the nature and source of it.

While some media reports have referred to alleged emails between Alonso and McLaren’s Spanish test driver Pedro de la Rosa, the champion told Spanish state radio on Thursday that McLaren had nothing to fear. “If they penalise the team, they penalise me. I’m part of the team and we share the problem,” he said. “We’re here to win, we’re leading and there’s not a single person in the team who thinks they’re going to penalise us or that anything is going to happen to us.”

source: autosport