Hamilton under investigation by stewards over impeding Piastri in Hungarian GP qualifying

The FIA stewards have summoned Lewis Hamilton regarding an incident involving the Ferrari driver and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in Q3 at Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Piastri lay fifth following his first run in Q3 and failed to improve on his last attempt after finding a slow Hamilton on the racing line in Turn 1, now known as Piquet Corner.

“Fuck me, man,” the Australian grumbled on the radio, showing his fist to the Ferrari driver on the approach to Turn 2 – coincidentally now named Hamilton Corner.

As it happens, the Briton was told “Piastri pushing” by race engineer Carlo Santi as soon as he crossed the finish line to conclude his flying lap, but this was followed by “yellow flag, yellow flag”, due to Max Verstappen’s spin in Turn 14 – Szisz Corner – taking centre stage in their conversation.

Then the McLaren racer was baulked by a confused Hamilton, who inquired: “Was Piastri on a lap, or…?”

Santi eventually admitted to being “caught by the yellow flag”.

“It was pretty bad,” commented Piastri, who did qualify fifth after all.

“I saw him from the start line and kind of watched him, expecting him to get out of the way, and I watched him basically all the way up until I nearly hit him. So, yeah, a shame.

“Even without that, it’s not been easy for sure this weekend for me. I think missing FP1 definitely had a bit more of an impact than I thought it would because the track conditions have been pretty different to what we’ve been used to.

“In saying that, you know, today the conditions have been quite a lot different to yesterday, but it’s just been difficult to catch up. And I felt like with every lap through qualifying I was slowly getting there and, you know, I felt like I needed that second lap in Q3 more than most weekends, and to not be able to do it was quite frustrating.”

Hamilton was surprised to be in a position to be impeding anyone as he didn’t expect any of his rivals to start their final attempt after he had finished his.

“I was told literally when he was at the apex behind me, so I had no idea he was coming,” he said. “I thought everyone came out behind me, I was the first out, so I thought everyone had finished their lap, and I think Charles was the car that was behind me when I left the pitlane, so as far as I was aware. So yeah, crazy, because it had been clean and obviously it wasn’t intentional.”

Pole position eluded Hamilton by 0.012s as Lando Norris edged ahead, so a potential three-place penalty would drop him down to fifth – although that would be a switch from the notoriously dirty side of the grid to the cleaner one.

“Congratulations to Lando, he did a great lap,” the seven-time world champion said. “I felt solid throughout qualifying, but for some reason we went out first, which I don’t think was the right call. And the grip wasn’t there for either Charles or I. We were quickest throughout, so it’s definitely one that got away.”

We want to hear from you!

– The Autosport.com Team