FIA president Max Mosley has advised Lewis Hamilton to distance himself from the sport’s politics rather than quit because of those issues.
Amid the highly controversial 2007 season, and caught in a storm about his driving behind the safety car in Japan, the McLaren rookie warned that “if this is the way it’s going to keep going then it’s probably not somewhere I really want to be.”
But speaking with reporters in London on Monday, Mosley insisted that the politics of a multi-million dollar sport like formula one are complex.
“My advice to Lewis would be to put the money in the bank and don’t worry about the politics. As long as he keeps driving quick he will be all right,” the 67-year-old Briton said.
Mosley suggests that Hamilton got caught up in a moment of frustration rather than having issued a serious threat to quit.
“I’m sure when he said what he did it was the emotion of the moment. You can understand him saying ‘I’m fed up of this’ which he is entitled to say, but I don’t think it would be a considered judgment,” he added.
Mosley also said he did not believe that the FIA’s pursuit of McLaren for espionage last year tainted Hamilton’s title hopes.
“I don’t think we did anything (wrong), and I don’t think it had any real effect on Lewis,” he insisted.
