Rubens Barrichello has criticised Lewis Hamilton’s driving at the Malaysian GP after the McLaren driver weaved to break the tow his car was giving Vitaly Petrov down the start/finish straight.
Hamilton had overtaken Petrov on the previous lap, but the young Russian managed to slip back past into turn one. Petrov made a small mistake into the final corner, which allowed Hamilton to close-up and use his superior straight line speed, thanks to his nifty F-duct, to once again overtake.
Hamilton then weaved several times across the track to break the tow his car was giving the Renault. The rules state that drivers mustn’t move more than once to block an overtake, but as this wasn’t an overtake, Stewards took the decision to warn Hamilton.
After watching the footage on TV, Barrichello criticised Hamilton’s weaving.
“I don’t think this is the right thing to do. When I saw it I was by myself watching the TV and I was quite critical of it. If he was beside me I would have given him some bollocking because it wasn’t right,” Barrichello is quoted as saying by Autosport.
“There are arguments to cover that, to say that he was under acceleration, not in the braking area. There are so many things that they could come up with, but the drivers have an agreement, sort of an agreement, obviously a verbal agreement, nothing that has been signed, that you should move only once during the protection of your line.
“So that for me was a Formula Ford thing. It shouldn’t have been done, to be honest.”
