Lewis Hamilton has said that he believes Kimi Raikkonen deserves his 2007 World Championship title and says he looks forward to beating him on the track in future.
His words come after the result of a hearing into claims by his teams that fuel irregularites by BMW Sauber and Williams at the Brazilian Grand Prix cost him points that would have secured him the championship.
F1’s International Court of Appeal ruled McLaren’s appeal inadmissible after two days of deliberations. The most likely grounds for this are an assertion by the teams that McLaren was not a sufficiently interested party and therefore had no right to bring the action.
But the exact grounds are not yet public since the FIA has said media organisations will have to apply to them to read the full ruling.
In a press release issued by McLaren Mercedes shortly after the decision was made public he said: “As I have said all along, Kimi deserved to win the 2007 World Drivers’ Championship, and neither I nor anyone at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes had any desire to take it off him in court.
“That was not the purpose of the team’s appeal. I am looking forward to the 2008 season and racing Kimi, and all my other rivals, on track and hopefully be able to go one better than the second place I achieved in this year’s World Drivers’ Championship.”