Lewis Hamilton’s penalty in Monte Carlo
To the more than four-tenths gap from Lando Norris’s pole position, three grid places were added at the end of qualifying for impeding Max Verstappen in Q1. Thus, Lewis Hamilton’s Saturday at the Monaco GP turned into a big disappointment after the FIA decided to impose the penalty on the Ferrari champion, ignoring Max Verstappen’s understanding words, the fact that Lewis Hamilton tried to stay as far left on the track as possible, and especially not considering that the pit wall error seemed linked to a technical problem with the Ferrari engineers’ monitors.
Once again, the “hard line” won, making the weekend even tougher for the seven-time world champion, who will have to start the race from seventh on the grid tomorrow. Even before knowing about the penalty, Hamilton had tried to explain why his race engineer Riccardo Adami warned him about Max Verstappen behind him, only to then say that the Dutch driver had stopped pushing. This was wrong information, as the Red Bull champion was still on his flying lap, aborted only after being disturbed by the presence of Ferrari number 44.
What Sir Lewis said
“I don’t know,” Lewis Hamilton said after the checkered flag of Q3 in Monte Carlo. “There was a problem with the computer screen and basically they told me Max was on a flying lap but then he disappeared and they said he wasn’t pushing anymore. That’s the information they gave me. They told me he was behind me so I moved aside but then they said he was no longer there so I accelerated again. I stayed all the way left but obviously Max still got distracted.”
The 40-year-old also spoke about his complicated process of adapting to the characteristics of the SF-25: “I’m getting there, little by little. I feel that in the last race we made a great step forward and in Monaco I felt more comfortable with the car. I think it’s a very different car from what I’ve had in the last 12 years. Charles has driven this car for the last six years, and I’d say this weekend the learning curve has been steep. But I’m quite happy with how I recovered after the accident (in FP3, ed).”
