Hamilton Says Red Bull Are Sandbagging in Malaysia

If we are to trust the recent timing reports in Malaysia after the second practice session, we'd be inclined to believe that McLaren are breathing down Red Bull's neck heading into the Saturday action at Sepang. And although some officials of the Austrian team have praised their rivals for catching up so quickly in terms of pace, Lewis Hamilton has a different view on things.

According to the McLaren driver, who ranked into the Top 3 in both FP1 and FP2 this Friday, both Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel have not used the RB7 at its true potential today. And while people are expecting a close fight for pole position tomorrow, the 2008 F1 champion doesn't have such high hopes, as he believes Red Bull are sandbagging in practice.

“I think it's a lot of rubbish, really,” burst Hamilton, according to Autosport, when asked by reporters at Sepang about some comments made by Red Bull officials according to which McLaren's pace is very close to theirs this weekend.

“I'm sure they have another half a second at least to pull out tomorrow. I hope that's the case, that we are closer than we were in the last race, but we'll wait and see tomorrow.”

His teammate Jenson Button, who finished FP2 only 0.005 seconds behind Webber, also concedes that only tomorrow's action will show the true pace of Red Bull this weekend.

“I don't know,” he said. “We don't know how much fuel they are running, as always. It's a normal Friday comment, I know, but it's the way it always is. We just do our own thing and for me the balance improved a lot today, and that's the important thing. The good thing is we found that we made positive steps.”