Sky Sports Formula 1 pundit Anthony Davidson said he “cannot work out why” Lewis Hamilton was penalised for pit lane speeding during the Hungarian Grand Prix. The analyst’s comments were made while he was live on air, poring over the footage of Hamilton travelling through the pit lane for his second and final change of tyres, which was when he incurred the result-changing penalty.
The stewards confirmed after the race that Hamilton had been clocked travelling at 80.1kph in the pit lane, where the hard limit is 80kph. As a result, he received a five-second time penalty which relegated him to fifth in the final result, having finished fourth on the road but only four seconds ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc.
But footage from the camera mounted on the Ferrari above Hamilton’s helmet appeared to show the seven-time world champion pressing his pit limiter button in time, and not releasing it until after he had exited the pits. And so Davidson was at a loss as to why the Brit had been punished as he watched the clip repeatedly.
He said on the Sky Sports broadcast: “I’ve looked at this so many times and I can’t work out why he gets a penalty. For me, he slows down sufficiently well. We’ve got this marker board on the left-hand side that stipulates the 80kph speed limit. I don’t see that [speeding].
“Let’s have a look at the exit. Obviously knew he was under time pressure to get out in that race with [Kimi] Antonelli. Again, for me, it sounds like he releases the pit lane button on the line itself. This guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to white lines and when to press the button.
“Maybe there was just an error when he was a bit too close to the line on the actual speed of the car and they were just pinged by that. Who knows? Strange that it only happened that one time. I don’t have enough data here and I can only go by the sound of when he is pressing that button. For me, it looked totally fine on the way in and on the way out.”
It was Hamilton’s second punishment of the weekend, having been found guilty of impeding another car in qualifying a day earlier, and his fourth penalty in his last three race weekends. Speaking after the race, he criticised Ferrari’s decision to pit him at that point in the race at all, but also conceded he has been responsible for too many mistakes in recent weeks.
He said: “I definitely don’t think we should have taken the stop. The call came just before the pit lane entry and I didn’t have time to debate it. You’ve got to trust the decision that has been taken but, in hindsight, my tyres were totally fine. I was probably going to lose out to Max, but I think I would have kept third at least. And it just opened up the door to the penalty that I got at the end.
“These last three races, for me, have not been great. Lots of mistakes, a mistake at Silverstone that cost dearly and then in the last race as well, and then this weekend. A lot of penalties in the last three races, so I’ve got to work hard to not give them any opportunities to give me any more penalties moving forwards.”