Hamilton under investigation for two incidents
Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has been summoned to the Austrian Grand Prix stewards for two separate incidents with the investigation possibly ending in a grid penalty.
Hamilton only missed the pole position in the first qualifying session of the 2020 F1 season, losing out to his team-mate Valtteri Bottas by 12 thousands of a second. Despite securing the second starting position for the season-opener at Spielberg, Hamilton’s front row start is now under threat.
The first incident happened during the last qualifying segment at 15:52 when Hamilton was on his first flying lap. The Briton has allegedly left the track at Turn 10 on his lap when he posted a time of 1m03.061. If stewards decide that he exceeded the track limits and therefore failed to follow the 21.1a paragraph of the Race Director’s Event Notes, his time will be deleted. However, as he managed to improve his first lap time on his second flying lap, the decision would not affect the starting grid.
Hamilton is under investigation for another incident. The Briton was right behind his team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the dying minutes of the qualifying session when the Finn made a mistake and ran into the gravel trap. Despite yellow flags, the Briton failed to slow down and posted a personal best second sector time.
The second sector of the Red Bull Ring is divided into seven mini sectors of which Hamilton posted in two ones the absolute best time while in another three he set personal best mini sector times. Bottas made his mistake in the fifth mini sector where Hamilton set a personal time and achieved his second absolute best time in the seventh mini sector of the middle part of the track where yellow flags were waved.
The Briton and the representatives from the Mercedes team have been asked to report to the Stewards at 18:15 in relation to the two incidents.
