In the early stages of his career, Lewis Hamilton was not always the best boy in the class.
In 2009, his team forced him to lie, after which he was caught and fired. The 2000s were full of unusual situations, fights and scandals in Formula 1. The teams broke technical restrictions when BAR was found guilty of using a different fuel tank and McLaren was eliminated from the 2007 Constructors race. and fined Spygate $100 million. That was before the failure of Indianapolis (2005) that ruined the reputation of F1 and number in the United States.
In this story, we go back 14 years and look at the controversial opening race of the 2009 season, the race where Brawn GP made its debut and took an incredible first place as Jenson Button began his title-winning campaign.
It was the first race under the big new aerodynamic rules that confused and simplified the cars and Brawn the twin diffuser stole all the headlines. Whether it was legal or not remains a hotly debated topic to this day… In any case, both Ferrari and McLaren fumbled with the new rules, giving so much to the 2008 battle with the F-60 and MP4-24. , and both turned out to be terrible early in the year.
However, Lewis Hamilton – in his first race as reigning world champion – finished third after Jarno Trullia’s was overtaken by the Italian when he slid off the track. driven by a Toyota late in the safety car. It made sense, but what followed led to both and Hamilton was thrown out of the race and the long-time McLaren employee was fired. The false-gate and a scandal After a collision between Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica, the Safety Car came onto the track, with Trulli running third and Hamilton fourth. McLaren radioed the new world champion to let the Toyota pass back, which Hamilton did on the approach to turn 4, but the safety car was still on, technically meaning Trulli passed Hamilton and was duly hit.
With a 25 second penalty. This was based on evidence from Hamilton and team manager Dave Ryan that there were no radio instructions to fire the Toyota back. Next, an interview was found in Malaysia that seemed to contradict this, as radio communications showed that Hamilton lied to the leaders and the Briton was clearly told to let Trulli back. Hamilton was immediately disqualified from the Australian GP and the FIA banned the team from driving on the condition that similar incidents do not occur again.
Ryan was fired for misleading the managers, while the faithful Hamilton apologized to the trustees and the media. The article continues below the images. Hamilton almost hung his helmet on the willows A few years later, Hamilton admitted that he almost wanted to leave F1 after that. It was a lot to process after everything that happened,andquot; he revealed.
I really like the way people look at me.andquot; I thought, and Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be here in this sport, But McLaren is my dream team and I should consider myself lucky to have driven here since the start of my F1 career. I never wanted to ride in another team, so at that moment I didn’t want to leave the team, just to stop racing. For a moment I thought andThat’s too much to handle. How do I recover from that? and.But the people around Hamilton knew how to get through him.
I love racing, but I just didn’t know… sometimes like that and the consequences are just hard to deal with. It’s hard to deal with people who, as soon as you turn your back on them, immediately talk about you. It created a negative energy and I don’t like that.andquot; andquot;However, I quickly realized that it was not just negative energy and that I received a lot of support and respect. It made me stronger.
It was an extraordinary experience. I can’t predict the future, but I love sports and have always said so. I like to win, fair and square. Honesty is very important to me.andquot;
