Motor sport: Hamilton calls for truce and targets the bigger battles ahead (original) (raw)

We're not at war," Lewis Hamilton declared yesterday, returning from his summer holiday to explain that he and his McLaren team-mate and championship rival Fernando Alonso had settled their recent differences during a private meeting after arriving in Istanbul for tomorrow's Turkish grand prix. "I apologised, he apologised, so now let's get it over and done with and keep on pushing for the rest of the year."

Hamilton, who leads Alonso by seven points in the drivers' standings, was describing the encounter at which they discussed the consequences of their very public dispute in Hungary three weeks ago, when the British driver rejected a request to let the reigning world champion pass him in order to take up a previously agreed order for qualifying and was repaid when the Spaniard blocked his own attempt to leave the pits for a final attempt at winning pole position.

"I called Fernando," Hamilton explained after yesterday's practice sessions, "and said, 'Look we can't go for the next three weeks without talking, or just relying on what the media are saying about us. We need to meet and talk about how we can move forward.' He said, 'Yes, I totally agree.' We decided to do it this week. First we talked about how good our holidays were. Then I put my hand up and said, 'I apologise for everything that went on at the last race,' and he said, 'Me, too.' It was great to find that we do have respect for each other. I said, 'We're going to have a good battle to the end of the season,' and he said, 'I understand that'."

But the rendezvous, to which there were no other witnesses, had been immediately preceded in their Istanbul hotel on Thursday by separate meetings between each driver and the McLaren-Mercedes team's high command, led by Ron Dennis, the team principal, at which the ground rules were re-emphasised.

"We run our team in a certain way and we expect certain behaviour from every member of the team," Dennis said yesterday. "The drivers subsequently spoke and reached an understanding between themselves. They're completely communicating and neither has a problem with the other."

Dennis believes in hiring the two best drivers available and offering them equal equipment and treatment. Once or twice in the past, however, notably when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost were in the team, his attempts to insist on correct behaviour have failed to avert a bitter schism.

"Sometimes it's difficult to achieve," he said, "but we think it's the way to run a grand prix team and that's the way it's going to stay. The important thing is that everybody recognised what their contribution was to the difficult circumstances we had after Hungary and committed themselves not to allow those things to repeat themselves in the future races. It's a pressure situation and occasionally things are going to spill over. But at the moment we're focused and pointing in one direction. If both drivers are committed to driving in this team in a fair way and committed to doing the best they can, I've achieved my objective."

Hamilton finished the day at the top of the timing sheet in the second session, but his team-mate's facial hair was more of a talking point. Had Alonso, who started the season with a close-cropped hairstyle that suited his new team's crisp, clean-cut image, grown a beard as a protest against what he is said to perceive as a bias within the Woking-based team towards their championship-leading British prodigy?

Asked whether he expected Alonso to be with the team next season, for the second year of a contract that runs for two years plus options, Dennis gave a typically opaque response. "We have contracts with both our drivers," he said, "and there has been no dialogue about anything in respect of those contracts. It's just not an issue at the moment."

Hamilton appeared to accept Dennis's view that the problem in Hungary began when the team's meticulously prepared plans were not observed. "We're two different drivers and we have to have two different strategies the majority of the time," the most successful rookie in grand prix history said.

"That's not to favour one driver more than the other but to defend us from the other guys and to get the best results for the team. What I have to do is do my job and obey the team and not make that mistake again. Ron, Fernando and myself had a lot of time to think about what happened and we don't want to go there again. We've settled our differences and we know where we stand. I've learned from some of my mistakes in the last race, and the same for them."

He was also keen to express his annoyance at the tabloid coverage of his holiday, which featured paparazzi shots of him on a yacht on the Cote d'Azur with one of the daughters of Mansour Ojjeh, the boss of TAG-Heuer watches and a McLaren shareholder. He was immediately assumed to be cheating on Jodia Ma, his steady girlfriend when he erupted into prominence. "I was supposed to go away with my friends and have a lads' holiday," he said, "but I thought that was a bad idea at the mid-point of the season because I'm leading the championship and I needed to relax, recover and do some training. I was invited on to the boat - there were 13 of us, including the three Ojjeh daughters, who all had their boyfriends there. We had a fantastic time, and in the second week I got back into my training. But now I'm supposed to be dating one of the Ojjehs, which is completely untrue. She has a boyfriend and we're just great friends.

"Then I went to the cinema the other day, with my best friend and his fiancee and my friend Mohammed. The papers said one of them is my bodyguard and I'm seeing this girl and cheating on someone else. It's not me, you know? I'm not a playboy. If I was, then fair play, write stuff. But I'm trying to lead a normal life."

And, as he pointed out, there is also needless collateral damage to others. "My ex-girlfriend and I, we made a mutual decision," he explained. "At the start of the season I said, 'I'm going to be away for two months and it's going to be hard for you.' She was only in the UK for me at that point, and she had a lot of problems with her family, so I said, 'Look, perhaps you should go back home, see your family, and when I come back from my first three races we'll see where we go from there.' She wants to be getting on with her career, not following me around. And it's the same for me. So we're still great friends but the papers keep bringing it up and it's devastating for both of us."

But with six races to go and his holiday over, now there is only one imperative. "I've recharged my batteries, I have a great car and a great team, and there's no doubt that I have a great opportunity. Provided I don't make any mistakes and the team don't make any mistakes, there's no reason why I can't win the championship."

Despite the justified optimism and the bland assurances, however, the atmosphere behind the mirrored glass façade of the team's mobile headquarters in the Istanbul Park paddock yesterday was one of a temporary truce between two men holding hand grenades with the pins removed, held apart by a very anxious team boss. The stakes are high and, with only six races to go, the slightest twitch could yet induce a resumption of hostilities.