"When you are in the pitlane they maybe tell you to slow down for five seconds so that the Williams can go past, and then you go out; you've got clean air. They don't tell you to wait on the spot."

Dennis said it was Hamilton’s failure to stick to the agreed procedure during the fuel-burning phase of Q3 that was the catalyst for the delay.

“We have various procedures within the team and prior to practice we determine how it is going to be run, what our strategy is, and how that’s going to be enacted on the circuit,” he said.

“They were out of sequence because Lewis should have slowed and let Fernando past,” he said.

“And he didn’t. He charged off. That’s how we got out of sequence.”

Dennis explained that the plan was for Alonso to complete an extra fuel-burning lap and that Hamilton had been told to let him past to facilitate this.

“In this instance, it was Fernando’s time to get the advantage of the longer fuel burn,” he said.

Reference to the circuit map shows that at the time Alonso was told he would be held for 20 seconds there were but 4 cars on the circuit, his own and those of Fisichella, Hamilton and Raikkonen. All but Raikkonen entered the pits such that there can have been no necessity to keep Alonso in the pits for 20 seconds waiting for a convenient gap in traffic in which to leave.

Spy-case is getting to them..

Its hard to see Alonso staying at McLaren till 09. Race by race he looks more unhappy with the team.

The fact that McLaren was penalised, as well as Alonso, probably means that Alonso was acting on his engineer's instructions...