Lewis Hamilton has been given a five-second time penalty which demotes him to eighth behind Fernando Alonso at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Hamilton exceeded track limits “multiple” times during the last laps of the Singapore Grand Prix after his front brakes failed and he tried to nurse his car home to the anger of Alonso.
In a foul-mouthed radio rant, Alonso said: “I cannot f****** believe it. I mean, I cannot f****** believe it. I cannot f****** believe it. Is it safe to drive with no brakes?
“For me, you cannot drive when the car is unsafe. Sometimes they try to disqualify me with no mirror, and now you have no brakes and everything is fine? I doubt it.”
Hamilton just held off Alonso by four tenths but his five-second time penalty put him behind the Aston Martin driver, whose seventh place is his best result since the summer break.
The stewards said: “During the hearing, the driver confirmed that he left the track at several occasions. He was trying to manage a brakes issue situation.
“This being said, after further investigation, and in accordance with the list of exemptions foreseen in the Driving Standards Guidelines, the Stewards considered that this was not a justifiable reason and apply the usual penalty for such type of infringement. This was not contested by the team representative nor the driver.”
Lewis Hamilton is sixth in the F1 Drivers’ Championship
Hamilton was the only driver in the top 10 to execute a two-stop strategy by running softs for the last 16 laps which meant he was pushing the car more which would have contributed to the brake problem.
Charles Leclerc let him through so Hamilton could attack Kimi Antonelli for fifth but just as he got to the back of the Mercedes driver, his brakes gave up.
“It was an OK race. I didn’t get a great start. Very difficult to overtake and I was stuck in position,” said Hamilton.
“I was catching Kimi then the brakes gave up. You saw the spark coming off the left front. I had to back off to cool them down and when I cooled them down they came back a bit, but still not fully there.”
Hamilton calls for better Qualifying execution
For the first time since July’s British Grand Prix, Hamilton outqualified team-mate Leclerc on Saturday in Singapore which underlined his upward trend over the last four rounds.
Ferrari were expected to be competitive around the tight Singapore street circuit but were a level behind McLaren, Mercedes and Verstappen.
Hamilton says the team are “pushing so hard” but are still leaving some performance on the table over one lap, which would make a difference for how their Sundays pan out.
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Lewis Hamilton admitted him and his team are not optimising the sessions, which saw the Ferrari driver qualify sixth for the Singapore Grand Prix
“I feel for all of the team, from catering to marketing, the guys in the garage and engineers. They show up every weekend and they really do give everything,” he said.
“It’s just the car we have is unfortunately not of the level of the guys up ahead of us, particularly as we had some upgrades and can’t match them.
“On the knife edge trying to get as close as we can. There was potential for us to be further ahead. In Qualifying, we are not extracting the full potential of the car. We didn’t in the last race and didn’t last weekend.
“There was potential to be third or fourth this weekend, if we had perfected the tyre performance and not queued at the end of the pit lane for example.
“In the race, we were on par with a couple of cars ahead of us. If we can get qualifying fixed, which is very hard, maybe we can get slightly better results but, ultimately, we are starting for fourth, fifth, sixth at best.”
F1’s title race now heads back to North America, with the United States Grand Prix in Austin up first on October 17-19 live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime