Button 'disappointed' by Hamilton tweet

Jesnon Button, right, voiced his disappointment over Lewis Hamilton's, left, tweet
4 September 2012

Jenson Button has admitted to being "disappointed" with Lewis Hamilton after his McLaren team-mate tweeted sensitive data prior to Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix.

Hamilton posted a picture on Twitter of telemetry data highlighting the difference between his qualifying lap and that of Button the day before. Button claimed his first pole in 50 races with McLaren, finishing 0.8secs quicker than Hamilton who started the race seventh.

Asked as to how he felt about the situation, race-winner Button told national newspapers: "I'll say disappointed. We work so hard to improve the car and to keep things like that private."

He added: "I don't think it is for me to be angry with Lewis as it's not a personal thing. It's more the information we work so hard to keep secret and private, that was the thing I didn't want to see on Twitter."

The graphs indicated such vital information as top speeds, tyre pressures and ride height, invaluable to rival engineers.

The disclosure resulted in team principal Martin Whitmarsh ordering Hamilton to remove the offending post, but not before it had been re-tweeted by many of Hamilton's one million followers. Whitmarsh declared Hamilton's actions as "an error of judgment", deciding not to take any internal disciplinary action.

Rival team boss Christian Horner, however, suggested the matter would have been "a breach of confidentiality" if committed within his team.

Technical director Paddy Lowe further attempted to play down the issue by claiming what was revealed in Hamilton's tweet would not be "of any great use to anyone".

Lowe added: "I don't think there is much damage done. The actual mistake Lewis made, which he understands, is he didn't really appreciate the nature of that information.

"The engineers don't like to see that because we spend our lives trying to keep things like that secret. So it is more what it represents."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in