The part of Hamilton’s Spa sprint penalty that should concern all F1 drivers

Lewis Hamilton taking on Sergio Perez through Spa's Stavelot sequence in last Saturday's sprint race was exactly what Formula 1 wanted. Mercedes versus Red Bull once again, even as just the appetiser for the main event still to come in the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix.

That the full race turned out to be yet another lead battle snoozefest is irrelevant, albeit unfortunate and the biggest problem facing F1 right now. But at least Lando Norris, Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda and co in the pack produced some excellent overtakes running down the order.

PLUS: The surprise star of Verstappen's latest Spa masterclass

The day before, the wet sprint race focus turned towards Hamilton and Perez, once Max Verstappen had demoted Oscar Piastri back to second – still an excellent result for the rookie McLaren driver, who is showing no fear nor inexperience at the top level. He’s the real deal indeed.

Perez had gone from harrying Pierre Gasly’s Alpine after the safety car restart to being attacked by Hamilton in turn. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff argued the second Red Bull driver was going “massively backwards” at this stage, but that’s only half right.

With Perez on a wider, wetter line through the Stavelot’s first right element, Hamilton shot up the inside and got alongside the RB19. As they accelerated through the second part, he was nearly ahead of it. That is until Hamilton clipped the inside kerb a tiny amount – sending water spraying up over his right front and altering his handling, just as the outside kerbs Perez had been on just before had slightly stalled the Mexican’s moment.

The W14 understeered into Perez’s right sidepod and the tiny contact, which both drivers did superbly well not to crash from, ripped a hole in the bodywork. Perez raced back ahead through the rest of Spa’s final sector, but Hamilton got him at La Source on the next tour.

Perez, his damaged sidepod visible, said after the sprint that his race was “ruined” by Hamilton

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The two Ferrari drivers then demoted Perez two more places in just four more corners, before Perez dropped it into the Stavelot gravel running ahead of Norris and was then retired in the pits. Perez said afterwards his race was “ruined” by Hamilton, as the damage apparently led to his RB19 losing “too much grip with [the hole]”. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner stated that the damage caused “a significant loss in downforce that meant we had no choice but to retire the car”.

As Hamilton continued on, he was handed a five-second time addition, which dropped him from fourth to seventh in the final results as he couldn’t get past Gasly’s Alpine and build a penalty-bridging gap.

Inevitably, outrage followed – both camps of supporters from that bitter 2021 title fight feeling aggrieved. For Mercedes, Hamilton and Wolff insisted it was an "absolute racing incident", per the latter.

“This is a sprint race,” Wolff continued. “We want to see them racing, and the argument of the damage isn't valid because he [Perez] was going backwards before then. Massively backwards.”

That the wet surface – the actual reason the incident occurred, not because of a major misjudgement or deliberate dangerous driving – wasn’t even mentioned as part of the stewards’ reasoning is baffling

Hamilton evoked his hero Ayrton Senna, saying: “I went for a gap. He was slow going through Turn 14 [Stavelot 1]. I went on the inside, I was more than half a car length up the inside. And if you're not going for a gap, then you're no longer racing, as Ayrton always said. That's what I did.”

The debate has calmed since, which exposes how quickly F1’s sprint races just fade as events – at least in a season where they just add more victories to one team’s huge total. F1 claims the extra race brings in the TV and online engagement numbers it desires, but there’s an additional underwhelming undertone for many too. In any case, it’s obvious which viewpoint will win overall, especially when it can be flexed into future financial gain...

But questions about this incident remain, as the F1 paddock jets off onto its summer break. But, for the drivers, these really need to be considered when they reconvene at Zandvoort and head into the campaign’s run in. It should help them in the long term.

Firstly, it must be put to the FIA in the drivers’ Friday evening meeting at the Dutch GP, why the incident was deemed worthy of a penalty in the first place.

Both Hamilton and team boss Wolff insisted the Perez clash was a racing incident

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

There are several factors contained in the query. Did Red Bull really need to retire Perez’s car? We take it at its word that the damage was costing him considerable downforce points, which is backed up by Ferrari eventually having to retire Carlos Sainz from the Spa GP with similar damage.

But the Spaniard made it through 22 laps – over twice the length of the shortened sprint the day before. F1 teams regularly retire cars to save mileage and indeed the consequences of the Hamilton/Perez contact wasn’t a part of the stewards’ decision. But the very F1 word, ‘optics’, is a factor here. People saw the incident, the retirement, then the penalty.

We can see why that process of events didn’t actually lead to the five seconds Hamilton received because the outcome can’t be viewed alongside the infraction – that alone should be assessed. But we cannot understand why the track conditions were not considered as mitigating circumstances, which is where the drivers come back into the reckoning.

That Verstappen says he “couldn’t see the safety car and I’m the first car” before the wet sprint got under way is one bad thing, that Gasly “didn’t feel safe” to compete running just six cars into the pack with the spray effect is quite another.

These ground-effect F1 cars send water into such a wide area the drivers just cannot see. And it’s not exclusive to Spa. Its undulation exacerbates things, but that happens at Suzuka too.

It’s a considerable problem for F1 – that its efforts to improve racing have harmed its history of wet-weather competition. At least steps are being taken to try and solve this, even if the Silverstone ‘mudguard’ test revealed that the initial design approach had little impact on reducing spray.

But that the wet surface – the actual reason the incident occurred, not because of a major misjudgement or deliberate dangerous driving – wasn’t even mentioned as part of the stewards’ reasoning is baffling. These things can happen when top-level drivers execute the type of racing that status deserves, so why wasn’t it considered a factor?

Given the conditions were not optimal, its remarkable they were not cited as a factor in the Hamilton-Perez clash

Photo by: Erik Junius

Hamilton was also only judged to have been “predominantly at fault for causing a collision”, per the stewards’ explanation document. Perez fairly gave him room on the outside, but this conclusion surely emphasises it was indeed a racing incident. They both stayed on it, the track conditions made the difference, a tiny unfortunate outcome ensued.

But this isn’t the only question the drivers should be asking of race director Niels Wittich after their summer holidays.

Hamilton, for a small understeer slide, was handed two penalty points on his superlicence at the same time. In Hungary the race before, Zhou Guanyu was given the same number for an error egregious enough the stewards felt compelled to stress it “was not one of those” lap one incidents where clashes and mistakes can be waved away inside swarming pack racing.

Hamilton’s new penalty points situation is the final baffling digestif of F1’s latest sprint race assessment

Sainz’s collision with Piastri in the Spa GP was, however, with the Spaniard’s La Source lock-up making it harder for him to follow Hamilton through the hairpin and effectively triggering Piastri getting pinched on the inside. But it’s understandable why the stewards' review into this was deemed unworthy of further investigation.

Yet Hamilton’s new penalty points situation is the final baffling digestif of F1’s latest sprint race assessment.

The officials will point to the rule book requiring certain penalties for driving infractions – that this leaves them little or no flexibility. But this element of F1’s latest Mercedes/Red Bull clash alone exposes yet another outrage around stewarding consistency.

Hamilton’s penalty situation leaves plenty to ponder heading into the summer break

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images