The error that led to Lewis Hamilton's Hungarian GP penalty — Yahoo Sports

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

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Formula 1 is a game of fine margins and there is no greater example than the five-second penalty Lewis Hamilton received at the Hungarian Grand Prix for pitlane speeding.

The seven-time world champion was second at the Hungaroring before pitting on lap 56 under virtual safety car conditions due to a gearbox failure forcing Oscar Piastri to stop before Turn 4.

It was a costly stop for two reasons: one, it led to Hamilton dropping behind Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli who didn’t pit and, two, what the Ferrari driver did at pit exit caused his penalty.

Ferrari revealed that the Briton pressed the pitlane speed limiter button too early, causing him to go just 0.1km/h above the limit, which dropped him to fifth in the classification behind team-mate Charles Leclerc after crossing the line in fourth .

“This isn’t a good result at all,” Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur told Canal+. “We can’t be satisfied with this. We made too many mistakes today, beginning with the two starts.

“Then we lost a position on the track to Verstappen and we made mistakes during the pitstops. The pit limiter [was] released too early. In the end, it’s not good.”

Sunday just added to a long list of penalties Hamilton has received across the past three race weekends, starting with Silverstone where he suffered an additional five seconds for a false start.

Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari

The 41-year-old was also penalised five seconds for contact with George Russell at Les Combes on lap one of the Belgian Grand Prix, the day Ferrari was also fined for an unsafe release on Hamilton who knocked down a mechanic in the pitlane.

Hungary qualifying then saw Hamilton impede Piastri at Turn 1 - the Ferrari driver called it a “communication error” - resulting in a three-place grid drop to start fifth and not second.

When these incidents were put to Vasseur, he replied: “It's difficult to put all the penalties in the same basket.

“For me, the accident with Russell, it's a race incident. If he has to do it again, I would ask him to do exactly the same, because he can't go on the kerb.

“Today it's probably a succession of mistakes, that he locked the wheel in the pitstop, that we lost a couple of tenths during the pitstop, and then he probably was trying to be optimum on the pitlane release, and he was a bit too early than the optimum.

“I think when you start to do a mistake, it's quite easy to do more than one, and this weekend is a good example of that.

“When we were trying to push during the pitstop, we are losing something. At the pit exit, we were two tenths of a second behind someone, and it's a succession of fact.

“The pace was decent, but we were completely unable to overtake Max at the beginning, then Piastri, and... point taken for the rest of the season.”