Perhaps his new job is filling the tank up.

 

 

I seem to recall Martin Whitmarsh saying at the start of this season that Mclaren needed to cut out on the mistakes. Button's wheel coming off was the last one that cost them a podium. This fueling error is another. Without it, LH should have been in with a good chance of a podium at least (barring other f@#k ups). And I still think that, while the penalty was about right, had it happened to Ferrari the outcome might have been different, especially with Alonso in front of his home crowd!

 

"The fuel rig guy put the rig on, but he had the handle set to drain fuel. He discovered his mistake and switched it to put fuel in the car. But as a result he didn't put as much fuel in it as he should have. You have to be able to drive back to the pit-lane and have one litre of fuel left for the FIA to test. He went across the start-finish line 20 seconds before the chequered flag but if they had sat in the garage for three or four more seconds to get more fuel in, they still would have had time to cross the line and complete another flying lap. Sometimes I don't think McLaren think on their feet."

Quote Gary Anderson BBC F1 technical analyst

 

They also had Hamilton's entire out lap to realise their mistake and do something about it (i.e. call him in). It would have cost pole position, but that would have been much better.

 

Pinkham looks good, but she is getting on my nerves. Her style of presenting is a la kids TV.

 

Apparently we aren't allowed to dicuss presenters or post pics

 

Monumental cock up by McLaren, they do seem to be doing their best to handicap their drivers this year.

I do feel that the penalty is a bit disproportionate.

Yes they deserved the penalty, but the reason why Hamilton was so fast was not to do with the fuel load, it was because he was the only person in final qualifying with a fresh set of the soft tyres. I'm sure he could have got pole with quite a lot more fuel in the tank, he was nearly 6 tenths faster than everyone else after all.

His Q2 time would have seen him 6th on the grid and I feel a 5 place grid drop would have been right, but then again I am not the stewards.

It looks like the stewards wanted to send out a clear message on running low fuel rather than punishing McLaren for what the actually did.

 

The penalty on Hamilton was extremely harsh, but then I remember Button/BAR getting banned for 3 races because their car was 4kg under weight.

I think it is to do with the opportunism bordering on cheating even though Hamilton would have easily got pole with another couple of KG.