Hamilton escapes penalty for impeding incident in second practice in Jeddah

Seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton has escaped a possible penalty for impeding Williams driverAlex Albon during second practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

In the opening practice at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton began on medium tyres, doing a few laps to get back in the swing of the challenging track, with times of 1’30”592 and 1’30”674, before switching to Softs with which they set their best times. The Monegasque ended up third fastest with a 1’29”309 while the Briton was eighth in 1’29”815.

The second one-hour session saw the Scuderia pair began on new Mediums before switching to Softs with which the Englishman posted a 1’29”371, 13th fastest, while his team-mate lapped in 1’28”749 on his third run to claim fourth place.

Towards the end of the session, both SF-25s were fuelled up to run in race trim as Hamilton and Leclerc completed a race simulation on the Mediums from earlier in the session. However, they were only able to complete two laps before the session was red flagged after Yuki Tsunoda crashed.

However, Hamilton was involved in a dangerous situation as he blocked Williams driver Alex Albon. The Thai driver was on a fast lap at the in the early stages of the second practice when the seven-time world champion was driving slowly on the racing line on the approach to Turn 17.

Albon was forced to back off, and the incident was quickly put under investigation by the stewards. With the incident having occurred during a practice session, the stewards elected not to hand out any penalties.

The stewards noted: “However, as agreed with the teams, unless the impeding during free practice was such that it could be regarded as dangerous, there will be no penalty for such impeding.

“During the hearing, the driver of Car 23 felt that he had the car under control at all times and while he was impeded, he did not consider the situation to be dangerous. He had seen Car 44 in front of him during the corner before.

“However, he did not expect Car 44 to be in the position on track that he was in and that shocked the driver of Car 23 as he approached Turn 17 and had to take evasive action.

“While his immediate reaction when the incident occurred was to say that it was dangerous, having looked at it subsequently, he agreed that it was not. We accordingly took no further action.”