Lewis Hamilton insists that there is “no bad blood” with Alex Albon despite having been penalized for the second time in three Formula 1 races for a collision with the Red Bull driver.
In Austria, the pair made contact after the final restart of the safety car when Albon, who was using new soft tires, made a bold overtaking move outside Hamilton. The incident mirrored that of the penultimate race of 2019 in Brazil, when Albon also attempted to pass in the closing laps.
Both times, Albon was sent spinning and missed a shot on an inaugural F1 podium podium, and Hamilton subsequently received a five-second penalty. In Austria, the Mercedes driver fell from second to fourth place, while Albon eventually retired due to a problem with the power unit.
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Hamilton insisted that the circumstances were different in both cases, and although he accepted Brazil’s responsibility, he thought the contact last weekend was a career incident.
“Well first of all I have great respect for Alex,” he said when Autosport asked him. “I think he is a super talented young man, and I have no bad blood or bad feelings towards him at all.
“In Brazil, he saw me approach him directly. That was for me with all my heart my mistake and my problem and I tried to face it with dignity. I think today was, in my opinion, a career incident.”
“I was on a much better tire. I went into the corner committed to blocking, obviously I was defending the position. I took the corner as usual, I had enough blocking to turn the corner.”
“The track falls when you go through that corner. So a lot of people understeer over there. However, I didn’t go back to power, I just kept slowing down, and he got on power, being that he had so much grip
“He was still the width of a car to the left of him. And finally, we touched. I think it’s unfortunate that we collided, and he didn’t want to collide with anyone.”
“I think it was unfortunate, but I have to respect the decision that the butlers ended up making, there is nothing you can say differently about it.”
Hamilton noted that in his initial comments to television broadcasters, he thought he might be to blame for the crash, but changed his mind after seeing a replay.
“Before I saw the incident, I apologized to Alex in an interview,” he said. “Just because in the heat of the moment, you don’t always have views of everything, and I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, and obviously I went to see the replay and I think it was a race incident, like I said.”
FIA race director Michael Masi said the stewards decreed that the match was a clear case of causing a collision.
“From what the stewards saw and from seeing him, Alex obviously had some momentum on the outside,” Masi said. “The point of contact, from what I understand from his explanation, Lewis’s left front to Alex’s right rear, was why they didn’t consider a race incident.”
“They felt that Alex was effectively on the edge of the track, more or less, and had completed the overtaking maneuver. For them there was nothing more to add. It was a fairly simple driving infraction for causing a collision.”
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