MONACO — Lewis Hamilton will start the Monaco Grand Prix from seventh position after dropping three places on the grid as a penalty for impeding Max Verstappen in qualifying.
Hamilton blocked Verstappen at Massanet (Turn 3) at the end of Q1 after an incorrect message from his race engineer, Riccardo Adami, led him to believe the Red Bull driver was not on a fast lap behind him.
Although Verstappen was able to avoid Hamilton and still made the cut for Q2 despite aborting his lap, the fault lay with Ferrari‘s misinformation to Hamilton and the stewards applied a three-place penalty in line with the precedent set by similar situations in the past.
“Car 44 [Hamilton] was on a slow lap and off the racing line as he was approaching Turn 2,” the stewards’ statement said. “Car 1 [Verstappen] was approaching Car 44 on a push lap.
“The team [Ferrari] first informed the driver of Car 44 that Car 1 was on a fast lap. Then they sent another message saying that Car 1 was ‘slowing down’ when in fact Car 1 was always on a push lap and was not ‘slowing down’ as suggested by the team.
“This resulted in Car 44 speeding up and moving into the racing line of Car 1 entering Turn 3.
“Car 1 had to react to Car 44 appearing to move into the racing line. This meant that Car 1 had to move off the usual racing line and the push lap had to be aborted by Car 1. We carefully examined the racing line taken by Car 1 in previous laps at the same area and determined that Car 44 did in fact enter the racing line that Car 1 used in previous push laps. This put it beyond doubt that Car 1 was impeded.
“The driver of Car 44 expressed his displeasure at the incorrect message from the team immediately after the incident. During the hearing, the fact of the team’s incorrect message leading to the incident was accepted by the driver of Car 44.”
Speaking after the session, Hamilton suggested there may have been a momentary glitch on Ferrari’s GPS data that made his engineers believe Verstappen had backed off.
“I don’t know if there was some sort of issue with the computer screen,” he said. “It said that Max was on the lap, and then it disappeared and said it wasn’t. So that was the information they gave me.
“They told me he was on a lap, so I moved to the side. I was completely the other way. And then, I guess for them they realised he wasn’t on the lap, so they told me that. And so I started to accelerate.
“I stayed fully to the left. And I wasn’t on the racing line, but of course it was distracting for Max.”
Verstappen said he did not blame his former title rival for the incident, but speaking before the stewards’ decision added that he expected Hamilton to be penalised.
“At the time, of course, I was like, ‘what was going on here’? You know, it was quite clear that there was a car in my way, but basically the team just told Lewis that I was suddenly driving slow,” Verstappen said. “So then, of course, Lewis accelerates, which is thing normal, because he thinks that I’m on a slow lap, but I’m clearly not on a slow lap.
“I know that it’s not his fault, but I even got a one place-grid penalty [previously], not even, like, not even impeding on a fast lap. So, if he gets away with that, I’m really surprised.
“It’s not like I’m trying to get Lewis a penalty. It’s just the precedent of what they have been using in the stewards room. I know it’s the team’s fault, clearly, because Lewis is normally always quite correct with these things.
“With these things, you know, like moving out of the way, and no one really wants to impede anyone on purpose. So, this was just unfortunate, but it happened.”
Source: espn.com