Timo Glock has denied he let Lewis Hamilton get by him on the final lap of the decisive Brazilian Grand Prix, and said he was racing as fast as he could.
Glock’s Toyota was overtaken by Hamilton’s McLaren on the final turn of Sunday’s race, allowing the British driver to finish in fifth place and become Formula One’s youngest champion at age 23.
Glock was the only frontrunner not to change to intermediate tyres when it began raining at the end of the race in Interlagos, and lost speed as he struggled to keep his car on the track as track conditions deteriorated.
Hamilton was in sixth place when he approached Glock’s car at the final turn of the 71-lap race, and easily went by him.
”The final lap was one of the hardest laps I have done in Formula One because there was no grip at all and on dry tires it was almost impossible to keep the car on track,” Glock said. ”I was pushing really hard to keep fourth place, and if you look at the lap times I was actually faster than (teammate Jarno Trulli) on the final lap, and he was the only other car on dry tyres at that stage.”
Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel was in front of Hamilton and also overtook Glock at the end.
The German driver defended the team’s decision to stay on dry tyres despite the rain.
”We were running seventh before the rain came and we would have probably finished there if it had been totally dry,” Glock said.
”Instead we finished sixth so that shows the strategy was the right one.”
But with Hamilton being able to finish fifth, home-crowd favourite Felipe Massa lost a chance to become the first Brazilian F1 champion since Ayrton Senna in 1991. Massa won the race, but needed Hamilton to finish sixth or worse to win the title.
”I didn’t even know that Lewis was directly behind me,” Glock said.
”I didn’t even know that Lewis had overtaken me until after the race. I was passed by three or four cars on the final lap and it was not easy to keep track of what was going on.”
After the race, Glock was taunted by some Brazilian fans who apparently thought he slowed down on purpose. Some of them repeatedly yelled at him, ”How much? How much?”
In his first season with Toyota, Glock finished 10th in the drivers’ standings with 25 points. His best finish was a second place at the Hungarian Grand Prix in August. Teammate Jarno Trulli finished the season with 31 points, in ninth place. — Sapa-AP