The additional Lewis Hamilton punishment that you didn’t notice
The Mercedes F1 driver was initially hit with a five-second time penalty for an incident with his Red Bull adversary, when they went wheel-to-wheel and made contact.
Those five seconds dropped Hamilton from P4 to P7 but the bad news would get even worse.
Hamilton was also hit with two F1 penalty points for the incident.
He previously had a clean racing licence.
Which F1 driver has the most penalty points?
- Seven points - Lance Stroll
- Six points - Daniel Ricciardo
- Five points - Pierre Gasly
- Four points - George Russell
- Three points - Yuki Tsunoda
- Two points - Zhou Guanyu, Lando Norris, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez, Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen
- One point - Alex Albon, Kevin Magnussen, Charles Leclerc
If a driver receives 12 points on their licence over a 12-month period, it will result in a one-race ban.
Penalty points are in place to keep driver behaviour under control. Points can be issued depending on the severity of an incident.
Hamilton verdict on time penalty
Hamilton said: “[Perez] was pretty slow and went wide and slow through 14. I got a great exit, I was more than half a car alongside him and we just ended up coming together.
“It was a bit of a racing incident really, naturally it wasn’t intentional but they saw it differently.
“It was very tricky conditions out there, we were all trying our best. It doesn’t make a huge difference, fourth or seventh in the Sprint you don’t get a lot of points.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
