SPIELBERG, Austria — Championship leader Lewis Hamilton will drop from second to fifth position on the Austrian Grand Prix grid after blocking Kimi Raikkonen during qualifying on Saturday.
A slow-moving Hamilton had just emerged from a stint in the pits when he was caught by Raikkonen in the early part of the opening qualifying session, Q1. Although Hamilton noticed the Alfa Romeo driver and moved off the racing line, it was too late for the Finnish driver, whose flying lap was hampered by the evasive action he took to slow down.
Raikkonen raised his middle finger at the five-time world champion as he passed him. Speaking after qualifying, he was clear on his view of the incident.
“He blocked me, as simple as that!” he said. “How can it be so difficult to move out of the way for people? And then there’s radios and for sure every team is telling which drivers are going fast or not. Let’s see what happens.”
After the penalty was announced, Hamilton posted to Instagram: “Totally deserved the penalty today and have no problem accepting it was a mistake on my behalf and I take full responsibility for it. It wasn’t intentional.
“Anyway, tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to rise.”
The verdict came over an hour after the pair visited the stewards at 1700 local time. It said: “Car 44 had just come out of the pits and was informed of the cars approaching, including car 7 [Raikkonen]. Although car 44 tried to take evasive action when he became aware of car 7 approaching on a fast lap, it was not sufficient to avoid impeding car 7, which had to then abort the lap.”
Hamilton was also issued one penalty point on his superlicence. A driver is awarded an automatic one-race ban whenever they accumulate 12 points over a rolling 12 month period. Hamilton has no imminent concern of that — this is the only blot on his record currently.