Lewis Hamilton faces a potential grid penalty at the Spanish Grand Prix after he continued driving his damaged Ferrari despite repeated instructions from his team to stop. The incident occurred during final practice at the Madring, when Hamilton lost control and crashed into the barrier at the final corner.
The session was red-flagged, but Hamilton was able to reverse out of the barrier. Because of the circuit layout, he needed to complete another full lap to reach the pit entry. However, his broken front wing was lodged under the car, causing sparks to fly as it dragged along the ground, while his tyre was smoking and eventually suffered a puncture.
Team orders ignored
Over the radio, Hamilton was told on multiple occasions to pull over, but he resisted. "Stop in the safest place, in the safety place possible," his race engineer said. The seven-time world champion replied: "If I can make it back, I will. If not, I will do it safely."
His Ferrari engineer then told him again: "We have a puncture on the front right. Stop the car." Hamilton replied: "I can see that," but still did not immediately stop. Eventually, he pulled over at the side of the circuit and climbed out.
Sky Sports criticism
Hamilton's failure to stop drew criticism from Sky Sports F1 commentators David Croft and Anthony Davidson. Croft said: "I know he's done 393 Grands Prix, but the rules are, you don't drive the car in an unsafe condition."
"The team is telling him to stop and the driver has twice now gone against that on the radio. And he finally does stop the car. I get the feeling race control are going to take a very serious view of that, because the team told him to stop."
Davidson felt Ferrari's instructions were not specific enough, saying: "The team need to give him more information. They need to say, 'The front wing is under your car and the race director is going to give us a penalty over this'."
He added that Hamilton was setting a bad example, saying: "Any young driver that is watching this right now, you don't do that. You just don't do that. That's what you could have tried to do [get back to the pits] but that rule is there for a reason. If it went under the car completely and jacked your front wheels up and there were marshals on the track, you've got to think of all these scenarios."
Possible penalty
The FIA's penalty guidelines for stewards mean Hamilton could receive either a reprimand or a grid penalty, depending on how serious the stewards deem his actions. At the time of writing, race control had not yet announced any investigation into the incident.
