Red Bull protests decision not to penalise Hamilton for Q3 incident

UPDATE: Lewis Hamilton to start in P5 after Red Bull is successful in its protest - MORE HERE

Red Bull Racing has submitted a late protest to the FIA into the decision not to penalise Lewis Hamilton for failing to slow for yellow flags during qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix after he was cleared by an investigation on Saturday.

Coming just 90mins before the start of the race, Red Bull has requested ‘a hearing to review a decision (document 33)’, which stated no further action would be deemed necessary by stewards.

Hamilton, who qualified second behind Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, was called to the stewards for two alleged offences on Saturday evening; one for a track limits breach on his first Q3 lap and another for failing to slow for yellow flags when Bottas went off into the gravel trap.

Though Hamilton was found guilty of the first offence – thus having that lap time taken away from him – he got to keep his quicker second lap after stewards agreed he was given conflicting messages from the marshals and signage.

“The driver mentioned that he passed a green light panel in turn five,” the communication read. “Video footage confirmed that there have been yellow flags and green light panels at the same time and therefore conflicting signals were shown to the driver. Taking this into account, the stewards decided to take no further action.”

However, Red Bull seemingly deems this to be incorrect and have thus lodged a late protest just ahead of the race.

Should the review fall into Red Bull’s favour, Hamilton could suffer a grid penalty or have his lap time deleted, which would place him back to tenth position.

It is the second protest launched by Red Bull aimed at Mercedes this weekend after calling for clarification on the DAS system, though the FIA would find in favour of the title-winning team.