Stewart: Mercedes should fine Hamilton

Mercedes should have fined Lewis Hamilton in the wake of his Spanish GP antics; that’s according to Sir Jackie Stewart.

Fighting for position on the opening lap of Sunday’s grand prix, Hamilton was forced onto the grass as he tried to slide up the inside of Rosberg’s W07.

With wheels on the grass, Hamilton was pitched into a spin that took both the Brit and his German team-mate out of the grand prix.

It was the first time since 2012 that Mercedes failed to score point and it also put an end to Rosberg’s attempts to add an eighth victory to his winning streak.

Stewart feels the triple World Champion deserves a “financial” penalty for the incident.

“It was all emotion,” the Scot told The Guardian newspaper. “First lap! Desperation. That’s not the way to win, not consistently. Hamilton is to blame. Rosberg was allowed to protect himself. You don’t go for it on the first lap.

“Two cars from the same team can’t possibly have an accident on the first lap. One of the major assets for all of the great drivers has been mind management. Don’t get wound up and excited. I think Lewis could have won this race but it didn’t have to be on the first lap. The accident was almost ready to take place.”

He added: “It was a tremendous faux pas for Mercedes-Benz to take both cars out. They are so much better than any other team. It’s just completely wrong – and then for Hamilton to throw the steering wheel out of the car. Probably $40,000-$50,000 of steering wheel. Emotion is a very dangerous thing.

“It’s unacceptable. Lots of people make mistakes. What you’ve got to do is come out of the mistake but you’ve got to admit it and think about why would you have done such a thing on the first lap, when you’re so much quicker than everyone else. I don’t think Lewis understood that. I don’t think that Rosberg did anything wrong.

“I think there’s a need for discipline – maybe financial. I would certainly have penalised the driver who made that mistake on the first lap. It would have to be financial. At the moment Lewis is making such a lot of money that it might not be a big penalty.”