“It’s a bit harsh”- Max Verstappen opines on penalty received to Lewis Hamilton during the Russian Grand Prix race.
Lewis Hamilton had an off day at work, as he received a 10 second penalty during the Russian Grand Prix race, but wonder at the might of Mercedes, despite the penalty, he still managed to end up at P3.
Though, it was later reported that Hamilton was later a subject to penalty points on his current licence which brings him closer to a one-race ban.
Max Verstappen who got major help to end up at P2 because of Hamilton’s time penalty later claimed that any kind of points penalty is harsh against Hamilton.
“It’s a bit harsh,” Verstappen said. “If you cause a crash it’s different right but I think the penalty Lewis got was already painful enough.”
“I don’t know how many points you got but two points? Two points. I don’t know, it’s a bit harsh that he’s up to ten points.”
“Maybe it was not correct where he stopped but penalty points for that, I am not sure that’s correct. Verstappen is hopeful the topic is discussed amongst the FIA and the drivers in the future meetings.
“It’s difficult,” Verstappen added. “Like I said before if it’s a crash or whatever you caused I can understand they want to hand penalty points to calm you down or whatever but with things like this I think Lewis didn’t do anything on purpose to create an issue or whatever – he wanted to practice his start.
“Maybe it wasn’t allowed there but OK, he was already penalised enough by having this penalty enough in the race so I don’t think you need to have penalty points for that.”
“I guess we will talk about it in the next briefing we have and see if something will happen or not. It’s always good I guess to talk about it and communicate. At least we know what we are up to fully and we will move on.”
Penalty against Lewis Hamilton shelved
Later in the day, Formula 1 gave a statement that the penalty points against Hamilton has been retracted as the stewards confirmed Hamilton had been instructed to perform the practice starts in the wrong place by his team.
“The Stewards received information from the team that the driver of car 44 had received a team instruction to perform the practice start in the incorrect place,” read the FIA stewards’ statement.
“This was confirmed by the stewards having listened to the audio between the team and the driver. Based on this information the stewards replace document 47 with this decision and therefore remove the penalty points imposed.”
