Lewis Hamilton respects Kevin Magnussen’s “pretty cool” honesty after hard battle

Lewis Hamilton has praised Kevin Magnussen’s brutal honesty after the pair came to blows in the F1 Miami Grand Prix sprint race.

Hamilton and Magnussen engaged in a near-race long duel for the final point on offer in eighth and clashed on multiple occasions.

Haas driver Magnussen was hit with three different 10-second penalties for leaving the track and gaining an advantage during the battle, as well as a fourth penalty of five seconds for exceeding track limits several times.

Having collected a total of 35-seconds worth of penalties, Magnussen dropped from 10th down to 18th and last.

After the sprint race, Magnussen admitted all of his penalties were “deserved”.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton said he respected Magnussen’s honesty.

“I think that’s really honest of him and I think that’s pretty cool,” said Hamilton, who finished eighth on the road but slipped to 16th in the final classification after being hit with a 20-second time penalty for pit lane speeding.

“We had a good race. It was a little bit on the edge in some places but that’s what I love. I love racing hard!

“For me, I wasn’t really frustrated or anything. But yeah, that’s what you do to work as a team, so bravo.”

Magnussen blamed the penalties on “stupid tactics” he had to use to help Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg claim valuable points in seventh.

"All the penalties were well deserved - no doubt about it,” the Dane conceded. “But I had to play the game again.

"I was in a very good position behind there. In the beginning of the race I gained a lot of positions and was up in P8.

"I was protecting well from Lewis because I had the DRS from Nico and I had good pace.

“But then Nico cut the chicane, and I lost the DRS and Nico could have given that back to give me the DRS to protect, because then we would have easily been P7 and P8. Instead I was really vulnerable to Lewis, started fighting with him like crazy.

“I had to just create the gap like I did in Jeddah and start using these stupid tactics, which I don’t like doing.

“But at the end of the day I did my job as a team player and Nico scored his points because I got that gap for him, so Lewis and Tsunoda couldn’t catch him. So not the way I like to go racing at all, but what I had to do today.”