Lewis: I tried to reach out to Massa

Editor 31 Oct 2011 9:12 AM

Lewis Hamilton admits Felipe Massa hasn’t spoken to him in a “long time” and also revealed that he tried to extend a hand of friendship to the Brazilian…

Lewis Hamilton admits Felipe Massa hasn’t spoken to him in a “long time” and also revealed that he tried to extend a hand of friendship to the Brazilian before the Indian GP.

The duo have not seen eye-to-eye in recent months following several on-track collisions and any hope that their tense relationship might be on the road to recovery took another blow in India when they made contact yet again.

Whereas Hamilton was the guilty party, according to the stewards at least, for most of their previous run-ins, Massa was punished with a drive-through penalty for Sunday’s incident at the Buddh International Circuit.

The McLaren driver says he tried to reach out to Massa after they observed a minute’s silence before the race to remember Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli.

“We had the one minute silence before the race, I was standing next to Felipe. He’s not spoken to me for a long time but I made the effort, I put my arm round him and said good luck for the race. Then I tried to overtake but I tried to pull out of it as he didn’t give me any space but we collided,” Hamilton told BBC Sport.

The 26-year-old had to settle for seventh place in Sunday’s race as he had a few problems with his car after the accident.

“I had some vibrations on the right-hand turns, it felt like the floor was scraping on the ground,” he said. “I was pushing as hard as I could but I didn’t have the performance. I’ll fly back and try to get my head back in the game.”

He added: “There is not much to say. It’s a disappointing day and my team deserve better.”