Lewis Hamilton given three-place grid penalty over Sergio Perez quali incident

Lewis Hamilton has been handed a three-place grid penalty after being found to have impeded Sergio Perez during Dutch Grand Prix qualifying.

Hamilton was knocked out in Q2 after failing to make the top 10 in qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix, and his Saturday got worse after the seven-time F1 World Champion was summoned before the stewards.

Lewis Hamilton penalised for Sergio Perez blocking

Additional reporting by Sam Cooper.

Hamilton had been trying to get out of the way of the rapidly approaching Sergio Perez as the Red Bull driver was negotiating his way through a flying lap, but wasn’t quite able to give quite enough room to the Mexican due to the nature of the Turn 9 exit he was driving at.

The incident resulted in Perez feeling aggrieved by the Mercedes driver’s actions, radioing in with fury to race engineer Richard Woods to say, “What the f**k is this idiot doing?!”, as Hamilton told his race engineer Pete Bonnington: “I was well out of his way.”

With Perez doing another run on the soft tyres to make it through to Q2, his fury hadn’t dissipated at the end of Q1 as he was told that he’d made it through.

“Yeah, but we **** wasted a set so… please,” he said.

“For worse than that I’ve been penalised, so I don’t expect any less.”

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Now, Hamilton has been handed a three-place grid penalty for impeding Perez, which would have seen him drop to 15th come lights out on Sunday at Zandvoort, before a rise to 14th after Alex Albon’s disqualification from qualifying moments later for running with an illegal floor body.

In their assessment of the incident that led to the penalty, the stewards wrote in their verdict: “Whilst there has been appropriate warning by the team and albeit the driver [Hamilton] tried to move out of the way, he could have slowed down more in order to not impede the other car and therefore consider the impeding to be unnecessary in the sense of the regulations.

Speaking to media, including PlanetF1.com , after the session, Hamilton said he had done his utmost to keep out of the way of Perez.

“Yeah, not ideal, it was a difficult session,” he said, after qualifying in 12th.

“I did. I did absolutely do my best to try and be as far out of the way as possible. It just didn’t work.”

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