Ferrari addresses Lewis Hamilton FIA penalties after ‘succession’ of race incidents
Lewis Hamilton has been a regular visitor to the stewards' office of late.
Fred Vasseur has said it is difficult to place recent penalties for Lewis Hamilton “in the same basket”, after receiving further punishments in Hungary.
Hamilton has been handed three five-second penalties in successive races, along with a three-place grid penalty in Budapest over the weekend for impeding Oscar Piastri in qualifying.
Lewis Hamilton penalties not ‘in the same basket’ – Vasseur
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The Ferrari driver acknowledged he seemingly “can’t catch a break” after being penalised for a false start at Silverstone, an early collision with George Russell at Spa, and breaking the pit lane speed limit by 0.1km/h during the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Russell himself admitted his contact with Hamilton at Les Combes was a racing incident in his view, but all three penalties have had an impact in the seven-time world champion’s recent run.
He still sits second in the Drivers’ standings at the summer break stage, 50 points behind Kimi Antonelli, and for the Ferrari team principal, Hamilton’s recent penalties are a case of one leading to another.
“It’s difficult to put all the penalties in the same basket,” Vasseur told PlanetF1.com and other media.
“But for me, the accident with Russell, it’s a race incident. I think if you asked me ‘would you do it again?’, I would ask him to do exactly the same because he can’t go on the kerb.
“So [in Hungary] it’s probably that succession of mistakes that he locked the wheel on the pit stop, that we lost a couple of tenths during the pit stop, and then he probably was trying to be optimal between release, and was a bit too early to be optimal.
“I think it’s when you start to do a mistake, it’s quite easy to do more than one, and this weekend is a good example that when we are trying to push during the pit stop, and slow, we are losing something. But at the pit exit, we are two tenths off what would be optimal, and it’s a succession of that.
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“The pace was decent, but we were completely unable to overtake Max [Verstappen] in the beginning and Piastri.
“The [speed] limit was 80kph, and the FIA agreed 80.5, and we did 80.6, and when the weekend is going in the wrong direction, 0.1kph is a big delta, and we took the penalty.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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