Hamilton apologises to McLaren

The Hungarian Grand Prix stewards penalised McLaren and Fernando Alonso yesterday after the Spaniard held off Hamilton in a late pitstop during third qualifying. As a result, Hamilton missed the opportunity to run another flying lap and possibly clinch pole position.

But despite Alonso losing pole position and McLaren not being allowed to score points in today's Grand Prix, the main culprit in the eyes of the team was Hamilton himself.

And, for the first time, the rookie star and his mentors displayed a strain in their relationship.

"I am in a lot of trouble with my boss," Hamilton told ITV. "I probably am, but that's the way it goes."

Hamilton and team boss Ron Dennis reportedly exchanged heavy words on the pit-to-car radio at the end of qualifying yesterday.

Hamilton reportedly made extremely rude comments to the team and to Dennis personally, leading Dennis to throw his headphones on the pit wall in disgust (a gesture that was misinterpreted by many to be in reaction to Alonso's pole).

This, Hamilton confirms, led to tense atmosphere within the team.

"I went to my normal engineers' meeting, and you can imagine the feelings, you feel like you have done something to the team.

"It does feel a little bit weird. Ron was obviously extremely angry with me at the time, I don't know if he still is.

"When you don't obey a team order from your team boss, who has given you the opportunity, it's a difficult situation.

"But in the end you have to stand up for what you believe and how you feel. At the time I took that decision (to disobey the team) and that's just the way it went.

"The team explained it all and I apologised for the decision I took when I was out there. But I was out on my own, I apologised to Ron and said it wouldn't happen again."

Nevertheless, Hamilton remained adamant that the pitstop incident was inexplicable, and rejected Alonso's explanations that he was doing as told by his engineers.

"I don't particularly think he has a great excuse for what happened," Hamilton added, "and that tends to lead to certain things.

"To be honest, me and Fernando have got on really well this year. We have been playing Playstation together here. I wouldn't say that we have in-depth conversations, I try to keep them going, but that is not easy."

A full transcript of Hamilton's interview with ITV can be found on the ITV-F1 website