Lewis Hamilton Hit with Five-Place Grid Penalty for Monza

Lewis Hamilton will face a five-place grid penalty at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza after stewards ruled he failed to slow sufficiently under double waved yellow flags ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver’s weekend at Zandvoort ended in disappointment when he lost control at Turn 3 amid light rain, crashing out of the race. Moments later, teammate Charles Leclerc collided with Mercedes youngster Kimi Antonelli at the same corner, resulting in a double retirement for the Scuderia.

Now, to compound Ferrari’s woes, Hamilton has been sanctioned for a pre-race infringement. During reconnaissance laps, the Race Director had instructed all drivers that double waved yellows would be displayed at the final corner before the pit lane to protect personnel on the grid and in the pit lane.

According to the stewards’ report: “The regulations require that any driver passing through a double waved yellow flag marshalling sector ‘reduce speed significantly…’. We looked through the available telemetry within the FIA system. We also requested the team to provide us with their telemetry data. All of this took some time and this decision was delayed as a result.”

The data showed Hamilton entered the flagged sector around 20kph slower than in practice, lifted off the throttle by 10–20%, and braked 70 metres earlier for the pit lane entry. However, stewards concluded this did not meet the standard of a “significant” reduction in speed, nor did his pace through the pit entry constitute “greatly reduced speed” as required under Article 44.1.

“The penalty guidelines for such an infringement would ordinarily attract a penalty of 10 grid positions at the next race,” the report continued. “However, given that the driver had made an attempt to reduce his speed and to brake earlier, we took that into account as mitigating circumstances and imposed a five grid place penalty.”

The penalty means Hamilton will start no higher than sixth at Monza, regardless of his qualifying performance, as Ferrari aim to bounce back in front of their home crowd after a bruising weekend in the Netherlands.

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