Lewis Hamilton’s run of picking up penalties continued during Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix after he exceeded the pit-lane speed limit.
In his haste to beat Kimi Antonelli to the first corner, Hamilton went 0.1km/h over the limit, triggering an automatic five-second penalty. That would ultimately cost him fourth place to Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, who was 4.3 seconds behind at the chequered flag.
24 hours earlier, the stewards found that Hamilton had impeded McLaren driver Oscar Piastri at the end of qualifying. While he set the second-fastest time, he was consequently demoted to fifth on the grid.
Should Ferrari have used team orders after Lewis Hamilton’s penalty, or would that have been unfair on Charles Leclerc?
In a social media post afterwards, he complained that he couldn’t ‘catch a break’.
Lewis Hamilton still isn’t over his penalty at Spa
In the first leg of the double-header at Spa, Hamilton was again docked five seconds, this time for causing a collision with George Russell on the opening lap. He escaped a further sporting penalty for an unsafe release.
Russell called the Hamilton clash a racing incident, as did Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. The majority of pundits agreed.
At Silverstone, he moved in his pit box before the lights went out, which amounted to a false start. That was a black-and-white five-second penalty.
Going back further to Monaco, Hamilton was sanctioned for speeding in the pit lane, along with several other drivers. It later emerged that the FIA had made a measurement error.
What do you make of Lewis Hamilton’s recent string of penalties? ⚠️
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Hamilton told F1TV after the Hungarian GP. “I’ve just [made] mistakes. Silverstone was a mistake, I got a penalty for that.
“Well, actually it wasn’t really a mistake in the last race [Belgium], and I got a penalty for something that was really a racing incident, even the driver that was [involved] with it said it was. And then this one today was just unfortunate.”
While he lost two points on Sunday, Hamilton finished 5.7 seconds behind third-place Max Verstappen at Spa, which suggests the controversial penalty didn’t cost him any points.
Hamilton is now 50 points behind Kimi Antonelli and admits that races like Hungary, where both driver and team made mistakes, could cost him the championship this year.
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