Ferrari warned Hamilton not to cut corners. He claimed it was “force majeure”

Lewis Hamilton was demoted one place after the Singapore Grand Prix for repeatedly exceeding the track limits.

The Ferrari driver struggled to reach the end of the race after being struck by a severe braking problem.

He was overtaken by Andrea Kimi Antonelli and let team mate Charles Leclerc past. With two laps to go he had over 43 seconds in hand over the next driver behind him, Fernando Alonso, but he was losing time at a terrific rate.

Hamilton’s race engineer Ricardo Adami advised him to reduce his speed as far as possible to increase the cooling to his brakes and help them recover. But doing this around one of the hardest circuits for brakes on the calendar cost him a huge amount of time.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

Hamilton’s radio messages after his brake failure

Having stayed on the track all race until this point, Hamilton began diving onto the run-off areas at some corners. In some cases this appeared to be because his brakes hadn’t slowed him down enough and he ran wide.

However he also cut the inside of several corners. When Adami warned him not to do this, Hamilton quickly replied: “I’m not trying to cut the course, mate.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

As Alonso neared him on the final lap, Hamilton increased his pace. He made sure not to cut turn 16 or 17 as they went through the final time and pipped Alonso to the finishing line by less than half a second.

Alonso was enraged that his rival had saved time by repeatedly cutting the track (a tactic he used at another track in 2018).

However the stewards did not overlook Hamilton’s repeated track limits infringements. They announced his five-second time penalty a while after the race, but Ferrari evidently knew it was inevitable once they saw he’d collected four strikes for running wide.

Adami told Hamilton on his in-lap he would be penalised. Hamilton hopefully replied: “Surely there’s no penalty when it’s force majeure?” But he was to be disappointed: the penalty dropped him from seventh to eighth behind Alonso.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

2025 Singapore Grand Prix

• McLaren’s pit problems strike again – three of their last four stops were slow
• Track surface changes key to surprise Singapore GP win – Russell
• Norris defends first lap move on Piastri: ‘If you fault me, you shouldn’t be in F1’
• Ferrari warned Hamilton not to cut corners. He claimed it was “force majeure”
• McLaren satisfied first-lap incident between Norris and Piastri was “just hard racing”

Browse all 2025 Singapore Grand Prix articles