Lewis Hamilton was hit with a controversial penalty at the Mexican Grand Prix on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton was unimpressed with the stewards’ decision to hand him a 10-second time penalty at the Mexican Grand Prix. In-car footage emerged after the race, showing the Brit sitting in silence as he made his way into the pit lane before remaining in the cockpit for a while, taking in his emotions.
Sunday’s race promised to be the seven-time world champion’s strongest of the season after qualifying. Hamilton lined up in third – a favourable starting position in Mexico City – behind Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc, giving him a shot at earning his first podium of the campaign.
However, things quickly came unstuck after the lights went out. Hamilton found himself in a fight with Max Verstappen, and after trying to stick around the outside of his long-time rival at Turn Two, he was forced to take to the escape road.
With limited grip available on the thin escape road, Hamilton took to the grass before re-entering the circuit. The stewards took a dim view of this decision and imposed a 10-second time penalty on the 40-year-old, which he served during his first pit stop. It dropped him to the back end of the point-scoring positions, and he finished in eighth.
“It was fun at the start,” Hamilton said after stepping out of the car. “It didn’t end up the way I hoped. But, you know, that’s motor racing. It was very, very dirty offline. I did the best I could to bring the car back to the track safely, and that’s all you could hope for. I got some points at least.”
When asked about the penalty, he added: “I don’t understand it. I haven’t seen… I literally just got changed. It doesn’t really matter. I know what happened, and I know how the race was. I don’t care, I move forward.”
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur joined his driver in complaining about the penalty. “This cost us P4,” he protested. “One thing is the penalty, for sure, that we didn’t follow the race director’s notes. But 10 seconds, I don’t remember when someone took 10 seconds.
“If you consider, if you have the global picture, saying that Max cut the corner before, he cut the chicane, in the grass, 100 metres. I think it’s not very well managed, honestly. Because you are in Mexico, on top of this, I don’t say that you have to adapt the penalty to the track, but you have to understand what you are doing.
“He took the 10 seconds. This dropped us at the queue of the group and we can’t overtake. It’s after the pit stop that you have no issue to recover. This cost us, probably P4, even with the five seconds; I think we were still P4. But with 10 seconds…”
