07/03/2024
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton is given a warning and his team fined €15,000 following impeding incident in FP2.
Having heard from the Briton and Logan Sargeant, together with their respective team representatives, the stewards determined that the Mercedes driver impeded the Williams at Turn 11.
As a result, Sargeant had to take evasive action by going off the track to avoid a collision. According to the stewards, had that not been done, there would have been a serious, high speed crash.
Indeed, Carlos Sainz who had a ringside view of the incident described Hamilton's actions as "highly dangerous".
Having listened to the team radio, it was clear to the stewards that Mercedes failed to warn Hamilton of the fact that Sargeant was arriving on a fast lap. That was a serious failure on the part of the team, particularly given the speeds on this circuit and the nature of turn 11, which is at the end of a series of high speed corners where driver visibility is impaired.
They therefore issued a warning to Hamilton and imposed a fine of €15,000 on Mercedes.
The incident was one of several during the course of the session, raising fears that the enormous differential in speeds between those cars on a fast lap and those on a slow is literally an accident waiting to happen.
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