This season's championship chase is developing into one of the tightest ever with four different winners from the opening four races — something that has not happened for 29 years.

And, if in the final reckoning come Brazil in November, Lewis Hamilton, currently runner-up, loses the chance of a second title by a couple of points he can retrace the misfortune to a pair of blundered pit stops in Bahrain.

That's when an unfortunate mess-up in changing his McLaren's left rear wheel — twice — was disastrously time-wasting and dumped him out of the running for a win and left him eighth.

He was not best pleased and moaned: "The pit stops were not quick enough and it is the team's job to sort it out."

Whether it was ham-fistedness on the mechanics' part or technical failure, or a combination of both, is not clear, but the pit crew man in charge of the wheel-change gun was removed from his task for the final round of stops.

Team boss Martin Whitmarsh promised an investigation and was head-shakingly stirred to confess: "That was a classic bad day at the office. The mechanic has taken it very badly and it is our job to support him right now.

"Any guy who volunteers to be a gun man in a team like this has to be brave. They try hard and they are under tremendous pressure."

Hamilton added: "We gave away a lot of points — and that is how championships are lost.

"So we have to try and make sure we pick ourselves up because we cannot afford to lose points like we did in Bahrain."

Intolerable pressure

And that is why when the teams resume testing in Italy next week there will at McLaren be as much focus and intensity on the pit stops as on the fettling of the car in preparation for the next grand prix in Spain in two weeks.

The pressure must be intolerable on the harassed crews, who have a target time of around 3.3 seconds to change all four wheels.

But their expertise can make or break their driver's chances of victory — break in Hamilton's case as we saw last in Bahrain. Not even his daringly brave overtaking effort could rescue the situation into which he had fallen through no fault of his own.

The mechanic may have been devastated at Hamilton's crucial points loss and his embarrassment at his own apparent ineptitude, witnessed by millions of television watchers worldwide, will live with him forever.

But you can be sure, too, that Hamilton and his partner Jenson Button in a vital and understanding team bonding move will each seek out the mechanic to reassure him of their trust now the initial frustration has passed.

 

The author is an expert on motorsport based in England