12/04/2007
NEWS STORY
Under the loving eyes of his adoring British media, Lewis Hamilton refused to rise to the bait at today's press conference.
When Felipe Massa was asked about a comment the McLaren driver made last week, when he is alleged to have said that he "tricked" the Brazilian into making the mistake that cost him the race, the English youngster was keen to put the record straight.
"I'd like to change that phrase," said Hamilton. "I said the wrong thing. I didn't trick him, you can't trick drivers."
Although the young pretender boasting that he had tricked a veteran of 71 Grand Prix might make great copy, especially for a British media desperate to have found a new, genuine hero, such a claim might appear arrogant. Just the sort of thing that the same media might use against him when it decides Lewis's time in the spotlight is up.
"We're all extremely intelligent," Hamilton continued, "we know what we're doing. I think what you try to do when you're out there is... it's the same when you're behind someone, you try to force them into an error and that's what I tried to do because that's the only way that I could keep ahead of him, especially if he's coming up the inside so I pushed as hard as I could and as we were dicing, I tried to force him into an error which I managed to do.
"So it's not tricking, it's...."
And at this point Massa interrupted: "... it's not dirty driving," he said, "this is just normal".
Drivers 1 - Media looking for an angle 0