Hamilton “very happy” but faces protest

Lewis Hamilton said he was happy to qualify ‘best of the rest’ behind the Red Bulls in Suzuka after missing much of practice.

However he will drop from third to eighth on the grid due to his gearbox change penalty following damage incurred during the Singapore Grand Prix which wasn’t detected at the time:

I think so considering the speed of the Red Bulls. We knew this weekend that that would be very competitive and it’s not been the best of weekends for us.

I must say that the guys back at the factory have been working so hard to bring updates this weekend and, unfortunately, one of them we weren’t able to use today which, of course, would have given us a little more time. I think it was a fantastic job either way just to get the updates here.

And again, unfortunately, we had to change the gearbox after the last race. The collision I had with Mark damaged the driveshaft or the differential, unfortunately we hadn’t noticed that so it caused us to have a gearbox change.

But nonetheless the guys did a fantastic job last night, they stayed up as late as they could to make sure the car was good.

It was difficult for me to come in today obviously, only having five or six laps in the track through Friday and Saturday. I feel very happy to have come this far. I’m starting eighth, but from there we can hopefully have a good race.
Lewis Hamilton

However the race stewards are currently investigating a complaint from Williams alleging Nico Hulkenberg was held up by Hamilton on his final run. He said:

We did a good job this morning, but my last run of Q3 was destroyed by Hamilton. I don’t understand why he backed off into me because there wasn’t a car in front of him. You need all the downforce you can get here so to be only a second behind the guy in front isn’t going to help you get a good lap and it didn’t help me today.
Nico Hulkenberg

Update: Stewards reject Williams protest over Hamilton

2010 Japanese Grand Prix