Hamilton did not admit causing car failure in Brazil

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The journalist who claimed Lewis Hamilton admitted causing his gearbox failure in Sunday’s race has admitted he invented the quote.

Luc Domenjoz of Canadian newspaper La Presse said: “My mistake was using a quote by Lewis when I did not talk to him myself. I had other verifiable information and I stand by my report, but under the time pressure I made a mistake by using that quote.”

The fake quote was later used on several websites including this one as the question of whether Hamilton caused his retirement was debated.

The revelation that the quote came from a newspaper is particularly ironic in the light of Ron Dennis’s recent criticism of internet journalism. He said in Brazil: “I have said so often, the Internet has been the bane of our lives. This is an uncontrolled, unedited, source of information that is fed into the media.”

And it’s doubly ironic given that the revelation that the quote wasn’t real came on the autosport.com website.

Photo: Daimler

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “Hamilton did not admit causing car failure in Brazil”

  1. He didn’t admit it but he did screw the drive.

  2. interesting. at the moment pitpass.com appear to be standing by their source.

    love the irony though :)

  3. Ron is right,China had the right idea of outlawing the internet because they are afraid of what they cannot understand and control.

    Fighting drugs, terrorism and cancer are all chicken**** compared to the internet.

    I even heard Keith Collantine hides Weapons of Mass Destruction in his database! Colon Powell told me and when had he been wrong?

  4. In some canadian blogs there is information about Luc Domenjoz had his source in people close to McLaren, not Hamilton as he said, and he did not confirm it for lack of time.
    Really it does not seem a good excuse…but still they say the source could be good yet.

    About Dennis and internet, I do have no certainty but some doubts about the reability of Dennis himself. About internet I do have certainty it is 60% not reliable; but still we do have good webpages like this one, where we are. Internet has good and bad sides, as almost all.

  5. Colon Powell, Dan? There’s two ways I can make a joke of that and only one of them has anything to do with semi-colons… ;)

  6. Kieth,

    I will revise my statement if you add and edit button to fix typos (even if are a more accurate description of a man). After further review, it is not Kieth that harbors WMD’s but rather Iran.

    Good call Clive!

  7. Clearly this Luc guy is just holding on to thin air. The steering wheel Lewis was driving with at the time, cannot in anyway support his alleged statement. If he had verifiable information why didnt he say it like that, rather than invent a conversation.

    Its a shame to defame just to sell newspapers.

    Ron is still right about the Internet, afterall, how many of us get to read Canadian newspapers?

  8. Its hard to know who to believe now. I don’t think you can blame it all on Internet journalism.

  9. This retraction only seems to say that Lewis didn’t tell the reporter himself – instead he told his engineers, and someone from the team passed this on to the reporter.

    So it’s not actually a denial that Lewis did anything wrong – or that’s how the story reads to me at least…

  10. Well craig, if you read Luc Domenjoz’s statement, he claims he over heard and not that anyone told him. Now was it possible that he over heard an inaccurate statement?

    Now how was he sure, if he even heard anything, that what was being discussed was not that Hamilton pressed the wrong button and stopped his car, but that rather, Hamilton pressed the wrong buttons to try and get his car back to life?

    Journalism is not about inventing your own story, its about stating what u see. If you want to carry out an analysis you do, but you dont carry out an analysis, then put up some hypothetical dialogue from your analysis as true discussion or fact.

    I wont be surprised if it turns out that, someone watching the video and knows about the steering wheel, raised that possibility, only in actual fact, they did not realise it was not the steering wheel they were familiar with, but an entirely different steering wheel altogether even though similar.
    Because the earlier statement made by Luc was similar to Lewis having pressed a button that put his car in the start sequence, other words, restarted his car. Now if he over heard Lewis tell his engineer that, then its sure a lie he is telling. That Neutral button he pressed was a quick change to put the car in neutral and its used often when the car spins or a driver cant find a gear. And when the car is in neutral simply pressing the paddle shifts puts the car in gear, but we all saw that didnt happen.

    Claiming he over heard is just a way so avoid litigation, cause now he would claim he doesnt want to reveal his source.

  11. It doesn’t matter if Lewis did tell someone else, who told someone else, who told the journalist in question. If you go admitting to making up random quotes to “verify” your story, you ought to lose all credibility. If the story is true, then that’s your tough luck for cutting corners, time pressures or not.

    Making up quotes from people could have serious repercussions, for all sorts of reasons.

  12. I just remembered it now, but the “feeder formulae curse” goes on, as Hamilton failed to grab the drivers’ title and become the first F2/F3000/GP2 champion to confirm his talent by becoming a Formula 1 champion!

    He’ll have a few more chances, and let’s hope he won’t waste ’em all!

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