McLaren errors undermine Hamilton and Button

It wasn't the homecoming McLaren's British pair had been dreaming of when they took to Silverstone on Sunday for the British Grand Prix. Jenson Button was forced to retire on lap 39, Lewis Hamilton's car almost ran out of fuel and the McLaren engineers were, once again, left with egg on their faces.

And it had all started so well. Hamilton, starting way back in tenth after his team had given him the wrong set of tyres for qualification, quickly made up ground and was in second place within the first half of the race. Button, meanwhile, got the home crowds cheering with a magnificent overtake on the inside of Felipe Massa early on in proceedings.

But a pit-stop error soon silenced fans. After Button had pulled into the pits on the 39th lap, a mechanic failed to reattach a wheel nut, meaning as the McLaren car moved off its front right wheel could be seen wobbling precariously. The Brit pulled over immediately, ending his race, with the team was subsequently fined £4,400 for an unsafe release.

Another McLaren error appeared to rob Hamilton of his chance at a podium finish. After fighting his way into contention with some superb driving, the 26-year-old was sent out with too-light a fuel load by his engineers after a pit stop. The result: Hamilton was forced to slow down to conserve fuel in the last laps of the race, ruining his chances of challenging the leaders and leaving him just hanging on to fourth place after a dramatic late challenge from Massa.

The young Brit appeared unamused by the incident: "In the wet, we were matching what we thought we expected but when it dried up we were drinking – guzzling fuel. That is not for me to anticipate, that is for the guys to figure out and get right."

Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal, shared his frustration: "It was not one of the best Grands Prix I have ever had," said Whitmarsh, whose record since taking over from Ron Dennis in 2009 has been mixed. "We don't want to let the fans down and we did." BBC commentator Eddie Jordan was blunter in his assessment of McLaren's performance: "It was a really grim day. They have to do a lot of soul-searching."

If things were bad in the McLaren camp, the refusal to obey team orders by Mark Webber has the potential to cause more serious long term damage to Red Bull. Webber, who has voiced his frustration with playing second fiddle to team mate Sebastian Vettel in the past, decided to aggressively try and overtake the German into second place near the end of the race, despite repeatedly being told to back off.

"About four laps from the end we felt it had gone far enough," explained Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. "From a team point of view, there was a big haul of points on the table and it made absolutely no sense to risk seeing both cars in the fence and coming back on a tow truck. His engineer asked him to maintain the gap a lap or two before my intervention. It was pretty clear Mark had chosen to ignore that." Horner said he will now hold "private" talks with the diver. ·