{"id":826083,"date":"2026-07-27T02:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826083\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T02:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:41:10","slug":"the-error-that-led-to-lewis-hamiltons-hungarian-gp-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826083\/","title":{"rendered":"The error that led to Lewis Hamilton’s Hungarian GP penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 is a game of fine margins and there is no greater example than the five-second penalty Lewis Hamilton<\/a> received at the Hungarian Grand Prix for pitlane speeding.<\/p>\n

The seven-time world champion was second at the Hungaroring before pitting on lap 56 under virtual safety car conditions due to a gearbox failure forcing Oscar Piastri<\/a> to stop before Turn 4.<\/p>\n

It was a costly stop for two reasons: one, it led to Hamilton dropping behind Max Verstappen<\/a> and Kimi Antonelli<\/a> who didn\u2019t pit and, two, what the Ferrari<\/a> driver did at pit exit caused his penalty.<\/p>\n

Ferrari revealed that the Briton pressed the pitlane speed limiter button too early, causing him to go just 0.1km\/h above the limit, which dropped him to fifth in the classification behind team-mate Charles Leclerc after crossing the line in fourth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a good result at all,\u201d Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur told Canal+. \u201cWe can\u2019t be satisfied with this. We made too many mistakes today, beginning with the two starts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we lost a position on the track to Verstappen and we made mistakes during the pitstops. The pit limiter [was] released too early. In the end, it\u2019s not good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday just added to a long list of penalties Hamilton has received across the past three race weekends, starting with Silverstone where he suffered an additional five seconds for a false start.<\/p>\n

\"Frederic <\/p>\n

Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Bryn Lennon \/ Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The 41-year-old was also penalised five seconds for contact with George Russell<\/a> at Les Combes on lap one of the Belgian Grand Prix, the day Ferrari was also fined for an unsafe release on Hamilton who knocked down a mechanic in the pitlane.<\/p>\n

Hungary qualifying then saw Hamilton impede Piastri at Turn 1 – the Ferrari driver called it a \u201ccommunication error\u201d – resulting in a three-place grid drop to start fifth and not second.<\/p>\n

When these incidents were put to Vasseur, he replied: \u201cIt’s difficult to put all the penalties in the same basket.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the accident with Russell, it’s a race incident. If he has to do it again, I would ask him to do exactly the same, because he can’t go on the kerb.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday it’s probably a succession of mistakes, that he locked the wheel in the pitstop, that we lost a couple of tenths during the pitstop, and then he probably was trying to be optimum on the pitlane release, and he was a bit too early than the optimum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you start to do a mistake, it’s quite easy to do more than one, and this weekend is a good example of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were trying to push during the pitstop, we are losing something. At the pit exit, we were two tenths of a second behind someone, and it’s a succession of fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pace was decent, but we were completely unable to overtake Max at the beginning, then Piastri, and… point taken for the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 is a game of fine margins and there is no greater example than the five-second penalty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,826,813,816,31147,31948,823,85,399025],"class_list":["post-826083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-hungarian-gp","tag-hungaroring","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sports","tag-the-error-that-led-to-lewis-hamiltons-hungarian-gp-penalty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}