DaveKillens wrote:Just this act alone (divulging the innermost workings of a team) really lowers my opinion of Hamilton as a person. I have no doubt that Hamilton was under strict orders to make this statement, to implicate Ryan totally and paint him as the one totally responsible.
So Lewis Hamilton may be a very good driver. He is currently the WDC, and most likely will win more. He's that good. But as now revealed, he is not immune to the lowest levels of manipulation and deceit. Maybe he ought to think about a career in politics after racing. Or maybe selling used cars. Those people never lie to you, either.
That's a bit of a damning discription of someone you earlier in this thread said you cannot comment on as a person becuase he's a stranger isn't it davekillens?
I mean to go from not being able to comment to that is a huge leap.
I've been watching Hamilton race now for 6, maybe 7, years now (I found out about him through a former school friend who currently races in the BTCC...he watches more lower series racing than I do) and over the course of those 6 years I feel I have built up a much better and more detailed view of Lewis Hamilton "the person" than one can get through just two seasons in F1. (btw, I'm not saying "you've only seen him for 2 years, I know better, please don't take it that way, hell for all I know you could have been watching him for longer, this isn't a personal jibe)
His two years in F1 have been...mysifying at times tbh, baffling, because he's been doing things occasionally which seem, from my knowledge bank of him, out of character. Now I feel I know why, the Mclaren PR machine is indeed a complex and powerful machine...just not as well oiled as they like to think.
I for one see his admission of guilt a good thing and I don't think his punishment should be as big as Dave Ryan's because Dave is his boss who told him what to do.
Put it this way, when Frankie Carbo was charged with fixing Boxing matches, Jake LaMotta (the higest profile boxer who took a fall on Carbo's instructions as to ganrentee a title fight later on) recieved a penalty far less significant than Carbo's jail term.
I'm not in anyway trying to say tht "Lewis did nothing wrong." He ballsed up...he ballsed up BIG TIME. But being able to come forward and admit guilt is better than what most would have done. Schumi never admitted to Jerez '97, or Monanco '06 or Adelaide '94 and that's his choice and I don't feel it right to discuss what the truth of that maybe in this thread. The fact is that many people feel he did wrong and he didn't admit it. Now many feel Lewis did wrong, and now he's admitted it.
I find that commendable and, while I don't know any of you personally, I feel I'm faily safe in saying that it's pobably better than what most of us would have done in that situation, to sit in front of a press pack, on your own, and look at those people, as a World Champion and role model to thousands, and say "I was wrong, I made a huge mistake, I'm sorry" takes guts. And it's much more akin to what I've seen in Lewis' character over the past 6 or 7 years.
I don't feel he's been breifed by Mclaren on this confrence, being briefed has caused waaaay too many problems to start with. He deserves his 3rd place to be taken away, I agree with that. I feel that should be the end of it.
I hope he's learn't a lot. Hopefully he'll be himself more often in future than the eternal "team player" for Mclaren.
Silence is golden when you don't know a good answer.