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Publication date: September 30, 2020
The Mercedes rivlas may have “marked” Lewis Hamilton’s practice outs to the stewards, according to Andrew Shovlin.
Minutes before the start of Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix, race stewards announced that Hamilton was under investigation for practicing a start outside the designated zone.
Instead of doing it in the area indicated in the race notes, the reigning World Champion advanced further down the pit exit.
The investigation, concluded during the race, declared that the Briton had broken the rules, not once but twice.
Hamilton received two five-second penalties that hampered his chances of winning in Sochi.
Still he finished P3 to maintain a 44-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship.
Shovlin, Mercedes’ director of track engineering, believes a rival could have given them away.
“In some places there’s a box that they paint on the floor and you have to do it in the box,” Shovlin told the F1 Nation podcast, “in other places it’s kind of a general area.
“Often if there is a lot of rubber, it will not be representative of the grip,” he continued. “The drivers, and also the engineers, will want to find a little closer in terms of grip on the grid.
“And what happened was that Lewis asked him if he could go a little further at the pit exit, we hadn’t realized how far he was going to go.
“But it’s really just trying to find a bit of asphalt that is more like what you will get when you start a race properly.
“We didn’t see the first, and when we saw the second we thought ‘they won’t like it.’
“We didn’t think it was dangerous and since the event notes said it was on the right hand side after the pit exit, we thought it might have been ambiguous enough that we would have …
“I mean that when we saw the position of the car it was not a complete surprise that they did not like it, and certainly there may be teams that marked it as much as if the FIA or the stewards saw it themselves. I do not know.”
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Hamilton reacted angrily to the penalties, accusing the race marshals of trying to “stop him.”
He has since backed down, apologizing for his comments.
You may not always do well in the face of adversity. I may not always react the way you want when tensions are high, but after all I am human and passionate about what I do.
“I am learning and growing every day, I will take my lessons and keep fighting until the next one.
“Thanks to those who continue to support and are there fighting me. We still get up! “
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