Did Hamilton delay Piastri by ignoring Ferrari’s instruction not to un-lap himself?

A tough day for Oscar Piastri in the Brazilian Grand Prix was made a little more difficult when Lewis Hamilton unlapped himself from the McLaren driver.

Ferrari told Hamilton not to pass the McLaren when he emerged behind Piastri after making his second pit stop. However Hamilton did so anyway, to Piastri’s dismay, as he realised it would cost him valuable time.

Hamilton was struggling due to the floor damage he sustained at the beginning of the race. However when he took a fresh set of medium compound tyres on lap 32 he was briefly faster than Piastri, who was still on his original set of mediums:

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Ferrari likely told Hamilton not to pass Piastri because they decided around this time to retire Hamilton’s car. He was making no progress due to his damage. The team had also used his third pit stop to serve his time penalty for a collision with Franco Colapinto. Race control confirmed he had successfully served the penalty, which meant Ferrari knew it would not be carried over to the next race.

Piastri’s race engineer Tom Stallard told him not to worry about Hamilton but acknowledged his driver’s concern about the time he would lose. He gave him the option of pitting but Piastri did not want to risk coming out behind the Racing Bulls (which Stallard referred to by their former name) and Pierre Gasly.

But the consequence for Piastri was clear: he lost almost a second on his first lap in Hamilton’s slipstream.

Although F1’s blue flag rules give a leading driver considerable assistance in lapping cars, they can still lose a significant amount of time in traffic. For example in Baku Max Verstappen was delayed by the two Alpine drivers racing in front of him.

After Hamilton un-lapped himself from Piastri he briefly pulled away, then dropped back towards the McLaren and was shown blue flags ordering him to let the McLaren by again. However at the same time Ferrari called him into the pits to retire.

As Hamilton dived into the pit lane he spotted Piastri following him in. The Ferrari driver took the unusual step of pulling over in the pit lane entrance to let Piastri by and avoid holding him up further:

(Note that as Piastri was almost a full lap ahead of Hamilton, their messages referring to each other below are separated by a lap.)

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Would McLaren have pitted Piastri had they realised Ferrari were about to bring Hamilton in? He had recently reported his tyres still felt good and had he been able to stretch them out long enough to run a one-stop strategy he could have been in a better position strategically.

Piastri used his pit stop to serve his own 10-second time penalty. Once he resumed in the race, Piastri indicated his misgivings about what now looked like being a two-stop strategy.

No doubt the 10-second pit stop did the most damage to Piastri’s race. But when Verstappen came out of the pits three seconds ahead of Piastri on lap 55, and when Piastri closed on George Russell over the final laps, McLaren must have wished Hamilton had followed his race engineer’s instruction not to un-lap himself.

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2025 Brazilian Grand Prix

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• Did Hamilton delay Piastri by ignoring Ferrari’s instruction not to un-lap himself?
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