‘I am not a liar’ – When Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the Australian GP

Throughout Lewis Hamilton’s incredible career, he has only been disqualified twice from the official classification by the FIA.

We’re going to look back at the 2009 Australian Grand Prix in particular, and the disqualification levied on McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton — the reigning champion at the time.

What happened at the 2009 Australian GP?

This article was originally published on March 10 2025

Drama had been circling Formula 1 well before the 2009 season got off to an official start, with McLaren and Renault threatening to boycott the season opening race. Neither team had been paid by F1 heading into the season — something that would only happen if they signed the new Concorde Agreement.

The two  teams finally decided that it’d be in their best interest to turn up, but at the track, several teams questioned the legality of the new diffusers that Brawn, Toyota, and Williams were boasting. While the protest was thrown out at the time, a visit to the FIA International Court of Appeals determined that the diffusers were, in fact, legal.

Heading into the Grand Prix itself, the Brawns of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello paced the field. When the event kicked off, Button retained his lead into the first corner and was one of just a few cars to avoid some chaos that kicked off further down the field.

Barrichello had stalled at the start, then pushed hard to regain the positions he’d lost. His left front tire collided with the sidepod of Red Bull’s Mark Webber, which pushed Webber into the McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen. Also caught up in the fracas were Adrian Sutil and Nick Heidfeld.

That first-lap incident set the tone for a race that was dominated by Button up at the front, but that descended into chaos further behind. A safety car appeared on Lap 18 when Kazuki Nakajima crashed into the wall between Turns 4 and 5, followed by another on Lap 56 when Sebastian Vettel collided with Robert Kubica.

Vettel attempted to continue with a broken wheel, but it wasn’t to be. His car came to a stop on the track between Turns 10 and 11, and a safety car emerged to guide the field to a quiet victory.

It was a Brawn 1-2, with Button taking his first victory en route to a decisive World Championship. In third was the Toyota of Jarno Trulli, but already there were concerns: It seemed that Trulli had perhaps passed Lewis Hamilton under safety car conditions — something actively forbidden in Formula 1.

It didn’t take long before Jarno Trulli was slapped with a 25-second penalty, dropping him down the order from third to 12th.

Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton — who had started a lowly 18th on the grid — was crowned with a podium finish in third place.

But something was amiss.

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Why was Lewis Hamilton disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix?

Article 40.14 of the 2009 Formula 1 sporting regulations stated, “If the race ends whilst the safety car is deployed it will enter the pit lane at the end of the last lap and the cars will take the chequered flag as normal without overtaking.”

After celebrating on the podium and conducting post-race interviews, Jarno Trulli was placed under investigation by the FIA: It appeared that, as the cars filtered home under the safety car, Trulli had passed Lewis Hamilton.

Trulli even went so far as to admit this, stating, “When the safety car came out towards the end of the race Lewis Hamilton passed me but soon after he suddenly slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

“I thought he had a problem so I overtook him as there was nothing else I could do.”

Hamilton echoed Trulli’s sentiment, saying that his McLaren team had actually asked Hamilton to let Trulli by.

Speaking to SPEED, Hamilton said, “I was behind Trulli under the safety car, and clearly you’re not allowed to overtake under the safety car. But he went off in the second to last corner, he went wide on the grass, I guess his tyres were cold. And I was forced to go by.

“I slowed down as much as I could. I was told to let him back past, but I mean… I don’t know if that’s the regulations, and if it isn’t, then I should have really had third.”

After hearing from both drivers, the FIA determined that Trulli should not have overtaken Hamilton – hence the 25-second penalty for the Toyota driver, followed by Hamilton’s promotion to third.

But, wait – this is a story about a Hamilton disqualification! So, what happened?

In the immediate aftermath, Toyota appealed the penalty, but again, Formula 1’s sporting regulations kicked in. Article 16.3 of the rulebook at the time stated that teams weren’t able to appeal time penalties that took place in the final five laps.

Toyota then turned to Tim Schenken, who was serving as clerk of the course, before ultimately deciding that it would be better to take this all the way to the top, directly to the International Court of Appeal.

On April 2, 2009, Trulli and Hamilton were asked to appear before the stewards to review the appeal, complete with new evidence.

There, a bombshell dropped. The FIA had sourced the radio conversations between Hamilton and McLaren. An instruction from the team to Hamilton to slow down and let Trulli by was nowhere to be found.

The FIA were not at all pleased by that.

“The stewards, having learned about the radio exchanges and the media interview, felt strongly that they had been misled by the driver and his team manager,” read the FIA statement released in the aftermath.

The FIA also made it clear that it wasn’t impressed by the fact that Hamilton had continued to double down on that misleading statement after the race, as well as by the fact that neither Hamilton nor McLaren bothered to correct the record despite knowing that a competitor was going to be heavily punished.

In the aftermath, Trulli’s third-place finish was reinstated. Hamilton, meanwhile, was disqualified from the race, and McLaren was stripped of its constructors’ points.

When the ruling came down, McLaren fired sporting director Dave Ryan, while an additional FIA meeting handed McLaren a suspended three-race ban — meaning the team wouldn’t be allowed to compete in F1 for three races if it committed a similar infraction within a 12-month span.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said, “We are disappointed by what has happened but in the circumstances we are not going to appeal.”

His whole statement is worth checking out:

“There is no implication that Lewis lied to the stewards.

“As I understand there is a belief that the team was not explicit enough in the content of the radio communications to the stewards.

“What they believe is that the omission of the information about the radio communication between the team was withheld and that is misleading.

“I believe it was a harsh decision. Lewis made a legitimate pass and then was repassed – at the time the team asked race control several times about the repass but they were too busy to answer that question so we felt the decision in the immediate aftermath was fair.

“I think it’s a regrettable day. It certainly wasn’t a deliberate attempt [to mislead].”

Remember, this is just two years after the ‘Spygate’ scandal, where a former Ferrari employee was accused of providing trade secrets to McLaren — so there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of trust between the team and the FIA at that point.

Heading into the rest of the season, a 24-year-old Lewis Hamilton was left to defend himself against some pretty strong public backlash.

“I could not tell you how sorry I am for the embarrassment,” Hamilton told the media during a press-conference ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

“I sincerely apologize to the race stewards for wasting their time and making them look silly. When I went into the meeting, I had no intention [to mislead]. I just wanted to tell my story and see what happened. I was misled and that’s just how it went.

“I want to say sorry to all my fans. I am not a liar or a dishonest person, I am a team player. If the team ask me to do something, I generally do it. But I felt awkward and uncomfortable.

“This is not an easy thing to do, to step back and realize I was in the wrong. But I was in the wrong, I was misled.”

At the close of the year, Hamilton finished fifth in the World Drivers’ Championship, taking wins in Hungary and Singapore. McLaren took third in the battle for the Constructors’ title.

Why was Lewis Hamilton disqualified from the 2023 United States Grand Prix?

The 2009 event in Australia isn’t Lewis Hamilton’s only disqualification from a Grand Prix — the seven-time World Champion faced a similar fate at the 2023 US Grand Prix, albeit for very different reasons.

The 2023 event at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas wasn’t just a Grand Prix weekend — it also featured a sprint race. Several teams had raised concerns about the bumpy nature of the track and the impact it could have on the cars, and those fears were realized after the checkered flag.

In the midst of a challenging season, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton crossed the line in second place and celebrated a hard-fought podium… only to discover, several hours later, that FIA stewards had found excessive wear on his skid block.

These blocks are mounted underneath the car and must remain a certain thickness in order to prove teams are complying to ride height regulations.

As a result of the excessive wear, Hamilton was disqualified. The FIA had determined that Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari had suffered the same wear, and the Monegasque driver was disqualified from sixth place.

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