Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri’s Sprint race domination in Spa got comprehensively overshadowed by, Lewis Hamilton’s collision with Sergio Perez. The Mercedes driver received a five-second time penalty for his role in the collision and it sparked a debate on whether he deserved it. Hamilton defended himself in an interview with Sky Sports and claimed that he couldn’t have avoided a “pretty slow” Perez.
During lap six of the 11-lap Sprint race, the Mercedes driver and the Red Bull driver touched while going wheel-to-wheel against one another. Even though the touch seemed light on the cameras, it severely damaged the RB19’s sidepod.
Checo and Lewis collide pic.twitter.com/gpkURPdF7U
— @RBR_Daily (@RedBullUpdates) July 29, 2023
The collision will now cost Red Bull $700,000 to repair a hole in the chassis ahead 0f the main race tomorrow. Furthermore, the incident also left Perez furious as he lost important points because of it. But for Hamilton, it was purely a racing incident.
Hamilton justified his place over the collision with Perez at Spa
Following the conclusion of the Spa-Francorchamps Sprint race, Lewis Hamilton opened up about the incident to the media. There, he insisted that he didn’t want to deliberately make contact with Perez.
According to Sky Sports, the Mercedes driver said, “He was pretty slow and went wide and slow through 14. I got a great exit, I was more than half a car alongside him and we just ended up coming together.”
Hamilton has been handed a five-second penalty for causing a collision in that battle with Perez
The Mexican has been told by his team to pit and retire the car #BelgianGP #F1Sprint pic.twitter.com/P4E9IlTbmg
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 29, 2023
Following this, he added, “It was a bit of a racing incident really. Naturally it wasn’t intentional but they saw it differently. It was very tricky conditions out there, we were all trying our best.”
In the end, the seven-time world champion wasn’t too unhappy with the outcome. Given he had a five-place grid penalty for causing the collision, he only lost three points after he got demoted to P7 from P4.
Lewis Hamilton set his target for Sunday’s race
Lewis Hamilton will start the Belgian GP race from P3 on Sunday. Even though he qualified in P4, his second row starting position was confirmed after Max Verstappen took his grid penalty for the gearbox change.
Despite starting from P3, he knows that holding Verstappen off will be incredibly difficult. Instead, he wants to finish ahead of Carlos Sainz who starts right behind him, and attack Charles Leclerc, who starts from P1.
As things stand, the W14s have good race pace compared to its competitors. Therefore, Hamilton can look forward to having a great points haul on Sunday to limit the damage caused on Saturday.
