Whitmarsh lavish in praise of ‘heroic’ McLaren driver

Published on 15/10/2012 01:20

McLAREN boss Martin Whitmarsh hailed Lewis Hamilton’s dogged drive to tenth in the Korean Grand Prix as “heroic”.

Hamilton’s hopes of signing off from McLaren at the end of the year with a second world title in his pocket are effectively over as the result in Yeongam left him 62 points adrift of championship leader Sebastian Vettel with a maximum of 100 up for grabs.

His Korean challenge was undone by a rear anti-roll bar failure during his first stint, which had a dire effect on the car’s handling and destroyed its tyres at an vastly accelerated rate.

It left the Briton as the only man who needed to make three stops during the 55-lap race as he slowly fell back from fourth place, despite his best efforts to fight with Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean as they took advantage of his woes.

Whitmarsh said: “I thought it was going to be very unlikely he would get to the end of the race. He showed really heroic fighting spirit to do a job.

“I have to come away incredibly proud of him and what he did in the circumstances.”