The seven-time world champion suffered no consequences.
Incident details
Lewis Hamilton was pushing hard yesterday behind the wheel of the Ferrari SF23 during the second day of testing in Barcelona, driving a TPC (a car at least two years old, with which each driver can complete a maximum of 1,000 km of testing per year, spread over up to four days).
The seven-time F1 world champion went off the track at 11:00 AM at the final corner of the Montmeló circuit, a turn now taken almost flat out (in qualifying) at around 200 km/h since the chicane was removed. “The runoff area is wide, but deceleration is strong,” reports today’s edition of Il Corriere della Sera. “Hamilton, however, got out of the cockpit on his own, and Ferrari reassures that he is unharmed. The car, however, was heavily damaged, especially at the front, and Charles Leclerc was unable to run in the afternoon.” La Stampa adds: “Driver error, according to sources from Barcelona, likely caught out by a bump or an irregularity in the asphalt. Nothing serious for Lewis, who exited the car on his own without any consequences, but more so for the car: damage to the suspension and aerodynamic components made it impossible to continue.”
As we noted yesterday, Lewis Hamilton’s crashes in winter testing—whether during his McLaren debut, his move to Mercedes, or now with Ferrari—seem to have become almost a tradition. Charles Leclerc was unable to run in the afternoon, leaving him with only two out of four test days completed with the TPC cars. The Monegasque and the Briton will return to the track next week, again in Barcelona, but this time in the SF24. Today at Montmeló, Antonio Giovinazzi and Dino Beganovic will wrap up the three-day test that began on Tuesday.
