A clearly-livid Lewis Hamilton has vowed to "find out" who made the fateful pit-call that cost him a podium finish in Australia.
Hamilton had produced a storming drive to close in on second-placed Robert Kubica when he was called in for a second pit-stop that none of the frontrunners, other than Mark Webber, made.
The stop saw him plummet in the running order and although he was able to catch Fernando Alonso he was heard to decry the "terrible decision" to change tyres as he struggled to pass the Ferrari. To compound Hamilton's annoyance, he was then punted off the track by an over-eager Mark Webber and ended up in just sixth.
Afterwards, despite the presence of Matt Bishop, McLaren's communications director, his fury was clearly close to boiling over.
"I'm happy with the job I did," he said pointedly. "That was one of the drives of my life. I was put back [in the order] due to others. I deserved better.
"The strategy was wrong. For some reason, I pitted when nobody else did."
Asked if he knew who made the call, Hamilton replied: "I will find out."
The answer was not long in coming. Pressed to identify the mistakee*, McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh told the BBC: "To all intents and purposes, it was my call because I am the team boss and I can veto any decision made on the pitwall.
"At the time it was made, I thought it was the right call. We made the decision because we thought we needed to change the tyres."
It is, though, unclear whether there was an actual need to change Hamilton's tyres and whether or not he would have been able to maintain his pace had he not stopped for a change. Whitmarsh's summary was ambiguous: "Had he stayed on and kept his tyres intact then we could have had a 1-2."
* PF1 is now in the habit of making up new words.
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