Spa stewards reveal reasoning behind different decisions following Ferrari incidents.
Lewis Hamilton insisted that his opening lap clash with George Russell was a racing incident, the Mercedes driver agreed, but the stewards didn't. However, while most believed Charles Leclerc's clash with Oscar Piastri was a slam dunk, again the stewards didn't.
Having been passed by both Ferraris on the Kemmel Straight as he struggled to maintain power, approaching Turn 5 on the opening lap, Russell attempted an overtake around the outside of Hamilton and had established sufficient overlap to be entitled to racing room. Hamilton remained on the inside.
During the corner, the seven-time world champion experienced understeer and, despite attempting to avoid Russell by applying corrective steering, made contact with the right-hand side of the Mercedes with his left-front wheel.
The stewards determined that Russell remained within the available racing room and that the collision was caused by Hamilton being unable to maintain sufficient separation.
They recognised several mitigating circumstances however. Hamilton acknowledged the presence of Russell, attempted to leave appropriate racing room and made a genuine attempt to avoid contact.
Indeed, the collision resulted from a loss of front-end grip rather than from an aggressive or deliberate manoeuvre. In addition, the incident occurred on the opening lap, where reduced grip and compressed racing conditions are
recognised.
For those reasons, while Hamilton was wholly at fault for the collision, the stewards considered that a 5-second time penalty, rather than the standard 10-second penalty, as the appropriate penalty in accordance with the FIA Penalty Guidelines.
"Ultimately, sorry for George," said Hamilton post-race, "because that obviously ended his race. But I did think, do agree that it was a racing incident," he added. "It's not like I went in aggressive and was misplaced or anything like that. I think it was just an unfortunate scenario, which happens in racing.
"I had damage as well," he continued, "so I carried that through the race. It was a tough one."
"Me and Lewis, honestly, I think it was a race incident," said Russell. "He didn't do it on purpose. He was more to blame than I was. But he didn't do anything reckless.
"I shouldn't have been in that position in the first place," the Mercedes driver insisted. "That's why I'm the most angry."
In terms of the Leclerc/Piastri clash, on the approach to turn 5, the Australian moved to overtake the Ferrari on the outside. The McLaren driver had some overlap on the Ferrari but his front axle was not ahead of the front axle of the Monegasque's car 16 and consequently, according to the stewards, there was no possibility of Piastri completing an overtake from that position.
In their determination, the stewards said Leclerc did not deliberately crowd Piastri off the edge of the track. The Ferrari driver followed the racing line before the entry to Turn 5 by moving slightly to the left to open up for the turn and side to side contact occurred between the pair.
In those circumstances, the stewards opted to take no further action.
"I lost the side board thing," Piastri told Sky Sports post-race. "OK, maybe I shouldn't call it a sideboard, that's something you put in your hallway. But I lost parts of my car.
"I don't know where I was supposed to go," he added. "So I was equally surprised that nothing came of it. Obviously it's small contact which had big consequences for me. It could have had very big consequences for both of us. But it is what it is.
"The balance suffered quite a lot for the first stint after that," he revealed, "and then we were able to compensate a bit in the second stint and the pace seemed better again. But yeah, it was just a bit of a tricky race from then on."
"Because of losing the board, we lost between five and ten points of downforce, dependent on the condition," said team boss, Andrea Stella. "And obviously when you have to find pace pushing the tyres, then the tyres may degrade more. That's when we see the pace of stint one and stint two for Oscar.
"We see that to say that he's using the tyres a lot, and then the tyres kind of give you the bill at the end of the stint."
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