Hamilton: Sometimes these things happen…

Lewis Hamilton

has shrugged off the accident that put him into the crash barriers and in the medical centre during practice for this weekend's Bahrain

Grand Prix

– an error that has given his engineers and mechanics much work to do before the action resumes on Saturday morning.

The British ace lapped fourth-quickest in both of the day's sessions around the Bahrain International Circuit in the Sakhir desert region, but despite occasional glimpses of form was unable to get close to the dual

Ferrari

threat of

Felipe Massa

and Kimi Raikkonen, as the latter looks almost certain to steal away his championship lead on Sunday. He admitted blame for the mistake that put his MP4-23 heftily into the turn seven barriers side-on, after he ran a little too wide over a kerb and lost control of the car.

“It was a shame that I ended what had been a productive day going off the circuit and hitting the barriers,” the 23-year-old reflected. “I was just pushing, and sometimes these things happen. I am absolutely fine, and hopefully the damage to the car isn't too bad. We would have had to change our engine and gearbox anyway, so hopefully I'm not going to be too unpopular with the boys in the garage.

“In the first session we stayed on the same set of tyres throughout. I flat-spotted one of them early on but – as it was only practice one – we chose to save a set of tyres, however we monitored the vibrations closely to make sure that they didn't cause any damage to the car. The circuit was obviously very dirty and continued to evolve throughout both sessions.”

Heikki Kovalainen was closely-matched with Hamilton throughout, the Finn winding up less than five hundredths of a second adrift of his team-mate in fifth, and positive of having made a solid start to his weekend's preparations.

“As this track is very hard on brakes that was the focus in the first session,” the 26-year-old explained, “just making sure we got as much data as possible and that everything was working well. The track was very dirty and there was hardly any grip to begin with, so we decided there was no point in using more than one set of prime tyres.

“In the second session we could turn our attention to general set-up work and tyre evaluation. We ran both the option and the prime and there is not that much difference. I am comfortable in the car and looking forward to the rest of the weekend.”

Team principal Ron Dennis and Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Vice-President Norbert Haug professed themselves in similarly optimistic frame of mind, even if the fastest McLaren at the close of play was almost a full 1.3 seconds shy of Massa's lightning-quick effort.

“Apart from Lewis' off towards the end of the second session, [it was] a good start to our Bahrain Grand Prix weekend,” Dennis mused. “The track continued to improve throughout both sessions and we gathered a lot of data.

“As Bahrain is one of the most demanding circuits on brakes, we monitored and evaluated our brake performance throughout. We experienced no problems and look forward to the rest of the weekend.”

“We completed our preparation programme for Saturday and Sunday,” added Haug, “and the times in race trim are not looking bad. Lewis' crash luckily was not too hard – his team now have a lot of work ahead before Saturday, but they will manage.”

crash.net