FIA responds to Hamilton’s criticism of Vettel’s 5 second penalty in France

Sebastian Vettel’s 5 second penalty and his subsequent ‘driver of the day’ award has been the major talking point from this weekend.

A wide circuit was always going to provide drivers with a lot of chances to overtake and the French GP was laden with overtaking manoeuvres.

All drivers went all out going into Turn 1 and Vettel’s mistake essentially took Bottas out, forcing both drivers to the tail of the race. Vettel was later handed a 5 second penalty for the move.

The then F1 driver’s championship leader still managed to finish 5th with Bottas having to settle for 7th spot.

Hamilton wasn’t quite happy with just a 5 second penalty as Vettel had essentially knocked Bottas out of the race and still finished ahead of him.

“Ultimately when someone destroys your race through an error and it’s only kind-of a tap on the hand really. [He’s] just allowed to come back and still finish ahead of the person that they took out, it doesn’t weigh up.

“He shouldn’t really be able to finish ahead of him, because he took him out of the race.” Hamilton said.

Charlie Whiting has said that the stewards cannot take consequences of an event into consideration while announcing a penalty decision.

The penalty was awarded keeping in mind how other such incidents have been treated this season.

“[The stewards] had four options open to them,” he said. “A five-second penalty, 10-second, drive-through or stop-go. They chose the five-second penalty which is consistent with other incidents of that sort.

“If you look at the consequences of an incident then maybe one could think differently. But stewards attempt not to do that.” Whiting said.