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'Unwelcome' Lewis' tale queried

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<b>WAS HE 'THROWN OUT'?</b> Now Mercedes F1 driver Lewis Hamilton claimed he was thrown out of his former team McLaren's garage - but that team says not. <i>Image: AFP</i>
<b>WAS HE 'THROWN OUT'?</b> Now Mercedes F1 driver Lewis Hamilton claimed he was thrown out of his former team McLaren's garage - but that team says not. <i>Image: AFP</i>
McLaren question Hamilton's version of events
Fri, Apr 19 2013

By Alan Baldwin

MANAMA, Baharain - McLaren has questioned Lewis Hamilton's version of events on Friday after the 2008 Formula 1 champion told an interviewer he had been thrown out of his previous team's garage in pre-season testing.

Asked how much contact he still had with McLaren, Hamilton told the official F1 website hat he went to see his former team mates at the 2013 season's Australian season-opener.

"I also tried to see them in Jerez, at the test, and (sporting director) Sam Michael threw me out of the garage. That wasn't very positive and I don't feel very good about that," the Mercedes driver claimed here ahead of the 2013 Bahrain GP.

"(Team boss) Martin (Whitmarsh) has been great and I have to say I haven't had enough contact so I will give Martin a call."

ENJOYED HOSPITALITY

McLaren's PR director Matt Bishop responded by saying: "Sam didn't throw Lewis out of our garage - rather he gently guided him out since our car was being worked on by our mechanics at the time, with a number of its dismantled components clearly visible, which nobody from a rival team should see.

"Lewis knew he shouldn't have been in our garage in the first place, just as all team personnel know they shouldn't enter a rival team's garage."

Bishop pointed out Hamilton had also spent time in the McLaren paddock hospitality space "at a number of grands prix" and had always been "warmly welcomed".

Hamilton moved to Mercedes at the end of 2012, breaking a connection that went back to his teenage days in karts that was, to the crowd's amusement, briefly re-tied when from habit he pulled into the McLaren pit instead of that of his new team, Mercedes, for a pit stop.
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