Hamilton cheated for record after controversial time penalty: – Ridiculous! – VG

– This is completely ridiculous! Lewis Hamilton exclaimed after seven rounds.

He had barely managed to keep Bottas behind him after the Finn got off to a great start to the race, but then the message came that turned Hamilton upside down in the race.

At seven laps of the race, the leader was informed that he had received two five-second penalties for having made an illegal test start to practice earlier in the day outside the marked places.

– Shit! Where does it say in the rule book? Hamilton yelled to the team on the radio.

Therefore, the Briton had to stay put for a full ten seconds at his pit stop in round 17, facilitating a choppy finish to the Russian Grand Prix. The 35-year-old driver drove as the 11th man and had to fight to make his way onto the field.

The Stevenage guy worked his way up the list, and after half a race he was third behind Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen. But beating the two is not an easy task, even for Lewis Hamilton.

Bottas and Verstappen made no mistakes towards the end, so there was no touch on Schumacher’s record on Sunday. But the 35-year-old has plenty of chances for his 91st win this season anyway.

– He deserves all the success he has had, says Sebastian Vettel, who has been with Hamilton on the F1 throne his entire career, in a video on Twitter before the race.

– A fantastic driver, he has been at the top since he first got into a Formula 1 car, and I have enormous respect for him, says George Russell in the same clip as Vettel.

“Obviously, Lewis will be remembered as one of the best, if not the best, of all time in Formula 1,” says Nicholas Latifi.

It was also dramatic in the first round of the Russian race when several cars crashed into the wall and Canadian Lance Stroll became the first to throw in the towel.

Several cars, including Max Verstappen, were also forced to take a detour away from the track. However, the Dutchman returned to the field between two polystyrene signs, but Carlos Sainz was not so lucky: he drove the left wheel directly into the brick wall and it also had to break.

– Sorry, people. “I’m so sorry,” Sainz said clearly disappointed to the team on the radio.

Bottas won the race by a good margin ahead of Verstappen. Hamilton came in third, 22 seconds behind Bottas.

NB! In Formula 2 earlier in the day, the race had to come to a halt for several minutes after Jack Aitken and Luca Ghiotto collided with each other and slammed straight into the wall. Both drivers escaped the incident unharmed, even though both cars were completely wrecked.