"It was very tricky conditions out there": Lewis Hamilton on collision with Sergio Perez in Belgian GP
Jul 30, 2023
Spa [Belgium], July 30 : Lewis Hamilton disagrees with the stewards' penalty because he believes his collision with Sergio Perez during the Belgian Grand Prix Sprint was simply a racing incident.
After receiving a penalty for his collision with Sergio Perez on Saturday, Lewis Hamilton fell from fourth to seventh. Earlier, he had lost the Sprint Shootout owing to a Mercedes error.
The Mercedes driver's front wheel punched a large hole in the Red Bull sidepod as he collided with Perez as they raced wheel to wheel into Turns 14 and 15 at Spa.
The seven-time world champion fell from fourth to seventh in the final rankings when the stewards determined that he was "predominantly at fault" and assessed him a five-second time penalty.
After the crash, numerous cars past Perez, and as he attempted to drive his damaged RB19, he ran out in the gravel and was ultimately forced to retire.
"He was pretty slow and went wide and slow through 14. I got a great exit, I was more than half a car alongside him and we just ended up coming together," Hamilton explained to Sky Sports.
"It was a bit of a racing incident really. Naturally, it wasn't intentional but they (the stewards) saw it differently. It was very tricky conditions out there, so we were all trying our best. Anyways it doesn't make a huge difference, fourth or seventh in the Sprint you don't get a lot of points," he added.
"Lewis just crashed into me and took the whole right-hand side of my car off so we basically lost all of the load. Unfortunately, that meant no points today," Perez said of the incident.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agreed that his driver had received an unfair penalty.
"Absolute racing incident. This is a Sprint race, we want to see them racing. The argument of the damage isn't valid because he was going backwards before then, massively backwards. And I think when you look at that corner, they were side-by-side and fair enough, it takes two to tango, but it's a racing incident. For me that's pretty clear," Wolff said.
