Lewis Hamilton crashed out of final practice for the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid and then ignorned instructions from Ferrari to stop his car
Lewis Hamilton ignored orders from Ferrari after crashing out of final practice for the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. The seven-time world champion lost control of his Ferrari under braking for the final corner and hit the barriers.
Hamilton was able to reverse out of the tyre wall and attempted to complete a full lap back to the pits. However, in doing so, he ignored multiple instructions from his team to park his broken car.
After being told to stop his car by his race engineer Carlo Santi, Hamilton replied: “Car is going.” But Santi was soon back on the radio again, saying: “Stop in the safest place possible.”
JOIN US ON FB! Get all the best sports news and much more on our Facebook page
Hamilton then replied: “If I can make it back I will and if I can’t I will stop safely,” to which Santi responded: “We have a puncture on the front. Stop the car.” Hamilton, in response, said: “I can see that.”
After completing two thirds of the lap, Hamilton eventually pulled over to the side of the track and emerged from his car which was taken back to the pits on a flat-bed truck. But the 41-year-old’s failure to stop despite the obvious damage to his car drew criticism from Sky Sports F1 lead commentator David Croft and his colleague Anthony Davidson.
Croft said: “I know he’s done 393 Grands Prix, but the rules are, you don’t drive the car in an unsafe condition. The team is telling him to stop and the driver has twice now gone against that on the radio.
“And he finally does stop the car. I get the feeling race control are going to take a very serious view of that, because the team told him to stop.”
While Davidson said: “The team need to give him more information. They need to say, ‘The front wing is under your car and the race director is going to give us a penalty over this’.”
Before he added: “Any young driver that is watching this right now, you don’t do that. You just don’t do that. That’s what you could have tried to do [get back to the pits] but that rule is there for a reason.
“If it went under the car completely and jacked your front wheels up and there were marshals on the track, you’ve got to think of all these scenarios.”
The FIA’s penalty guidelines mean Hamilton could receive either a reprimand or a grid penalty, depending on how seriously the stewards view his actions. After a lengthy delay, the running restarted before Ollie Bearman also fell victim to the Madring.
The British driver spun out at turn 10 and slammed into the barrier sustaining heavy damage to the left-hand side of his Haas. Bearman was uninjured in the high-speed crash but his mechanics will face a race against time to repair his car for qualifying which gets under way at 4pm on Saturday.