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Hamilton: It won't happen again

Monday 4th August 2008

Lewis Hamilton has vowed that Felipe Massa won't overtake him again after the Ferrari driver made him eat his words by forcing his way past his startled McLaren rival at the start of the Hungarian GP.

Expected to cruise to victory, Hamilton was overtaken for the lead of the race by Massa's muscular driving as they approached the second corner side-by-side.

"I had one of my best ever starts but Felipe had an even better one. I covered my ground on the inside. He locked up and then turned, I thought we were going to touch, so I slowed down even more. But he still pulled it off and I lost a place. It won't happen again," reflected a chastened Hamilton afterwards.

The Englishman's annoyance - if not embarrassment - will have been made all the more acute by his comments after the German GP two weeks ago when Massa was criticised for offering feeble resistance to Hamilton during his charge to victory.

"He didn't defend very well," Hamilton said at the time. "All I know is that if it was the other way around then he wouldn't have got past."

How Hamilton must have rued those words this weekend.

Whether or not Hamilton's unwise criticism acted as a spur for Massa is unknown, but Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali has rated his performance as his best in F1. Offering the Brazilian heady praise after an engine failure denied him a richly-deserved victory, Domenicali commented: "We are very sad for Felipe because in my view he did the best race of his career today. It was fantastic the way that he attacked when he had to attack, and he managed the race at the moment, so we are very disappointed for that."

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