Albon “surprised” by penalty for Hamilton collision

Alexander Albon said he was surprised to receive a penalty for colliding with Lewis Hamilton because he didn’t delay for the Ferrari driver.

The pair made contact when Albon tried to pass Hamilton on the inside at turn 14. The Williams driver touched the rear of the Ferrari and lost part of his front wing but did not appear to damage Hamilton’s car.

“Lewis made a mistake, I went for an overtake,” Albon explained. “Honestly, maybe it was a slight misjudgement, but I think it was really minor.”

The stewards gave Albon a five-second time penalty for the collision and added a penalty point to his licence, putting him on a total of five.

“I’m surprised I got a penalty for that, especially because it didn’t [cause] him any issues,” Albon told the official Formula 1 channel. “So I’m not sure why it was so strong.”

In their verdict, the stewards said they lessened Albon’s penalty because he did not significantly affect Hamilton’s race.

“Car 44 [Hamilton] overtook car 23 [Albon] on the straight before turn 14, then car 23 attempted to
regain the position,” they noted. “In doing so he misjudged his proximity to car 44 and his front wing collided with the rear left wheel of car 44.

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“In mitigation of penalty, this was a relatively minor collision and car 44 was unaffected by the incident.”

Albon was also reprimanded for leaving the grid at too high a speed at the start of the formation lap. The stewards accepted that because Albon’s radio had failed his team was unable to remind him to switch on his pit lane speed limiter before pulling away from his grid box.

“The driver failed to set his speed limiter for the formation lap and under the regulations was required to maintain the pit lane speed limit until passing the pole position,” the stewards noted. “In this case there was a radio failure and the team was unable to advise the driver to set the speed limiter. Subsequently he reached 92 kph prior to passing pole position. As no sporting advantage was gained, a reprimand was determined to be the appropriate penalty.”

Albon has now received three reprimands this year. Any driver who collects five over a season receives an automatic 10-place grid penalty.

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