Not for the first time this season, motor-racing websites were enlivened last night by angry Lewis Hamilton fans, who believe that their man was, yet again, wrongly penalised by the stewards after outbraking himself at the first corner of the Japanese Grand Prix.

Some even viewed the drive-through penalty meted out to Hamilton as the stewards' way of evening the score once they realised that they had to punish his championship rival, Felipe Massa, of Ferrari, for crashing into the McLaren Mercedes driver on the second lap.

At McLaren, the mood was unrepentant. Hamilton made it clear that he should not have been punished as did Ron Dennis, his team principal. As far as Dennis was concerned, Hamilton had indulged in nothing more than the conduct of a racing driver in combat and had committed the sort of first-corner error that goes unpunished at races everywhere. “Any experienced motor-racing person sees it as a racing incident,” Dennis said. “First-corner incidents like that are absolutely commonplace in grand-prix racing. Everybody is on tyres that haven't got up to full operating temperature at that point and if people leave their braking late, that's what happens.”

Dennis also stood up for his young driver amid inevitable criticism that Hamilton had let the pressure get to him and took unnecessary risks to try to regain his lead after being overtaken by Kimi Raikkonen, in the Ferrari, immediately after the start. “It's all the benefit of hindsight,” he said. “Yes, he could have been a bit more mindful of the situation, but I'm sure he was pretty frustrated with himself for screwing up the first corner. I think the thing that really got to him was the penalty - it really did. He was bitterly complaining about it in the car. Without the penalty, we would have still got points, that's for sure.

“Lewis is a racing driver. That's what makes him the driver he is. He is going to fight for positions at every opportunity. You are not going to stop him doing that. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been nice if he had been a little bit more prudent in the first corner. Some of the things he does leave us in awe of him. The simple fact is he is a great driver and we are going to fight for the World Championship, but it's sometimes a bit of an uphill struggle.”