Lewis Hamilton has lost his front row start for the Austrian Grand Prix, less than an hour before the race is due to begin, after being given a three-place penalty.
Max Verstappen has been promoted to second place on the grid in place of Hamilton’s Mercedes. His Red Bull team requested the stewards review the decision they made yesterday not to penalise him for allegedly failing to slow for yellow flags.Hamilton will start the race from fifth position. Lando Norris has been promoted to third, followed by Alexander Albon in the second Red Bull.
The stewards’ accepted Red Bull’s request for the decision to be reviewed after the team supplier new, 360-degree onboard camera footage from Hamilton’s car.
“The new video footage clearly shows that a yellow light panel was flashing on the left side of the track in turn five. A green light panel was flashing at the end of marshalling sector nine.
“Taking into account these facts, the stewards determine that decision 33 will be reversed and the above mentioned penalty is being imposed.”
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Stewards’ decision to accept Red Bull’s appeal request for a review
The stewards received a petition from Aston Martin Red Bull Racing (including video footage) for them to review, in accordance with Article 14 of the FIA International Sporting Code, the following decision made by the Stewards at the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix Competition:
Document 33 – 2020 Austrian Grand Prix.The stewards, summoned the team (Document 39) and held a hearing at 13:45 on Sunday 5th July, 2020. The Stewards heard the driver and the team representative.
The stewards determine that the additional video evidence represents a significant and relevant new element which was unavailable to the parties at the time of the competition concerned.
Reasons:
During the initial hearing, no on-board video footage of car 44 was available to the Stewards. Aston Martin Red Bull submitted 360 degree camera footage from car 44 including the passage of car 44 through the relevant section of the track.
Stewards’ verdict
Following a petition to review decision 33 taken after qualifying, the stewards acknowledged that the on-board footage of car 44 represents a significant new element (see decision 41) that had not been available to the Stewards in the hearing on Saturday and therefore reviewed the case.
The stewards heard from the driver of Car 44 (Lewis Hamilton) and the team representative and have reviewed the new video evidence and telemetry evidences.
The new video footage clearly shows that a yellow light panel was flashing on the left side of the track in turn 5. A green light panel was flashing at the end of marshalling sector 9. Taking into account these facts, the Stewards determine that decision 33 will be reversed and the above mentioned penalty is being imposed.
Updated 2020 Austrian Grand Prix grid
2020 F1 season
- Pictures: Wrecked chassis from Grosjean’s Bahrain fireball crash to go on display
- Bottas vs Rosberg: Hamilton’s Mercedes team mates compared after 78 races each
- F1 revenues fell by $877 million in Covid-struck 2020 season
- Hamilton and Mercedes finally announce new deal for 2021 season
- F1 audience figures “strong” in 2020 despite dip in television viewers
Sameer Cader (@)
5th July 2020, 13:32
very much deserved
Jere (@jerejj)
5th July 2020, 13:34
#MindGames
Nik (@nickelodeon81)
5th July 2020, 13:34
Presumably all those saying the FIA were too chicken to penalise Lewis because of his BLM involvement out of fear of being seen a racist, have changed their minds?
SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
5th July 2020, 13:40
You believe Red Bull has access to footage, the FIA doesn’t have access to?
synonymous
5th July 2020, 13:46
From a camera mounted on Hamilton’s car, no less
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
5th July 2020, 13:49
It appears to have been published after the stewards issued the verdict yesterday.
synonymous
5th July 2020, 13:52
Should that have not meant that the investigation needed to be re-opened immediately?
petebaldwin (@)
5th July 2020, 13:40
Any suggestion that they didn’t penalise him because of BLM is stupid. It should be asked why it took a team to protest for the decision to be made though…. Presumably if Red Bull didn’t do that, Hamilton would be starting 2nd.
Is that how F1 works now? Shouldn’t the stewards be making the correct decisions without the need for protests?
Yaru (@yaru)
5th July 2020, 13:51
You can only protest if you present new evidence. Red Bull did present new evidence.
Question is, where did they get that footage of Hamilton’s car and why didnt the stewards had access to it? (or did they dun dun dun?)
The lack/finding of new evidence is more interesting than the actual incident itself honestly.
petebaldwin (@)
5th July 2020, 13:59
It came from the official F1 Twitter feed…. If the guys who run the Twitter account have access to on-board footage that the stewards don’t have access to, something is very wrong!
ColdFly (@)
5th July 2020, 14:05
Strange indeed.
Bruno Verrari
5th July 2020, 13:36
Finally right!
Are three places enough? He not even did not slow down – he was dishonest, lying to the stewards!
GnosticBrian (@gnosticbrian)
5th July 2020, 13:45
Like Max at last year’s Mexican GP? At least Lewis had the grace / common sense not to boast about getting away with it!
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
5th July 2020, 13:55
Yeah. Outright lies.
Bruno Verrari
5th July 2020, 14:16
I don’t care about Max, but dishonest it was! That deserves an end-of-the-grid start at least, if not being banned for a race, for lying to the stewards and unsporty behavious (HAM often does under pressure)…
mystic one (@mysticus)
5th July 2020, 20:46
same old common rubbish if not racist comments towards ham… he wasnt sure until he may have seen it briefly while at the same time/place there is green flag! officials already said/admitted stewards messed it up there! lying and denial and unsportmentship behaviour is actually in red bul’s dna! how many times people condemned ves driving and attitude on and off track? they even brought a rule on his name due to his driving attitudes… how many times he drove into people blatantly obviously? how many times after these incidents he blamed everyone else but himself? despite even his team calling him to be behave and be sportsman, he refused blatantly, say for example mexico against vettel!
remove your tinfoil, and be realistic!
Mog
5th July 2020, 22:22
So the guy gets penalised after a review of the original decision. In that light its likly he was dishonest to the stewards, like most of the grid would be
A comment calls him out on it and all of a sudden its racism? For why?
I really hope the rest of the season is not peppered with such irrational rhetorical rubbish.
Ipsom
5th July 2020, 13:38
How did red bull obtain the footage but the FIA didn’t?!
MacLeod (@macleod)
5th July 2020, 13:39
every team has the same footage and more…
Ipsom
5th July 2020, 13:43
And not the FIA? Kind of a shock that they didn’t have access or saw this footage
@macleod @jlb
jlb
5th July 2020, 13:45
Maybe the footage was published by FOM after yesterday’s incident.
MacLeod (@macleod)
5th July 2020, 13:46
They didn’t had that footage as it’s onboard the car and have to be accesed specific (360 thing)
So they used there own camera’s which couldn’t see this perfectly.
Bruno Verrari
5th July 2020, 14:18
Incompetent stewards…Red Bull shall appeal also the DAS decision.
jlb
5th July 2020, 13:39
360 camera from Hamilton’s car.
jlb
5th July 2020, 13:40
In response to Ipsom
Broekie
5th July 2020, 13:41
Decision #33…
Either way, looks similar to MEX last year..
BasCB (@bascb)
5th July 2020, 13:43
Quite a surprise that Red Bull was able to submit footage that was shown from a tweet by Formula1! How is it possible that Stewards did not have this footage???
Not great that this had to be rectified this late (by the way, that means Ferrari stay ahead of Mercedes for most front row lockouts, right?). Off course the penalty is wholly deserved. The uncomfortable part is why did they not take this footage in account earlier, and it had to be submitted after Formula 1 tweeted the footage and Red Bull hat to put the steward’s attention to this?
Bruno Verrari
5th July 2020, 14:20
Incompetent stewards under time pressure…
In this perspective, Red Bull shall appeal also the DAS decision (decided by the same stewards)…
Nik (@nickelodeon81)
5th July 2020, 13:46
Because humans are not infallible. And in fact, this is why the appeals/protest system exists. All that matters is that the right decision was ultimately made, even if it took a windy path to get there.
SadF1fan
5th July 2020, 13:47
And Max won’t allow Hamilton to bully or emotionally blackmail him into taking a knee.
https://twitter.com/Max33Verstappen/status/1279742916651626496?s=20
Nik (@nickelodeon81)
5th July 2020, 13:55
His mechanics all did, interestingly.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
5th July 2020, 13:57
I’m glad Max did it. But RedBull really look like tried to get on Lewis nerves.
mystic one (@mysticus)
5th July 2020, 20:52
if karma was a person, would be redbul and ves’ gf :) and alonso would approve 100%
cduk_mugello (@cduk_mugello)
5th July 2020, 13:48
I can’t believe the stewards didn’t watch on board footage as part of their original decision. That’s mad.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
5th July 2020, 13:49
Why did they need Red Bull to provide images is beyond me. This isn’t a hard thing to police … Its as simple as watching all the cameras which I might not have because I’m not subscribed to F1 TV but I’m sure FIA can afford it, right??
Baffling….
Yaru (@yaru)
5th July 2020, 13:54
360 cameras are not streamed, they’re onboard the car and needs to be accessed specifically afterwards, so it is not as simple as you say of watching it on live monitor recording.
The bigger question is why didnt they check it beforehand. Seems like an important viewpoint to check.
John H (@john-h)
5th July 2020, 14:09
Stewards already incompetent. Why didn’t they watch the footage? Where is the conflicting green flag though they talked about? Anyway, great for the race!
Yaru (@yaru)
5th July 2020, 14:51
According to Christian Horner in an interview durinf the race, the race promoter released the footage only this morning (as mentioned by a previous user, 360 video footage is not streamed but stored onboard).
So FIA did not have access to the footage until today. The appeal system was designed for situations like this where new evidence appears.
DAllein (@)
5th July 2020, 14:26
Comment during the race: Verstappen just retired!
That is karma for you. RBR!
pSynrg (@psynrg)
5th July 2020, 14:29
Let’s see what karma has to say about that…
Kehinde
5th July 2020, 16:06
Wow!
You, Sir, were prophetic. Karma s bitch.
What exactly did redbull get out of all these this weekend?
Esploratore (@esploratore)
5th July 2020, 17:46
Karma what? That’s irrelevant, it’s just red bull lacks some reliability compared to mercedes (and speed ofc), protesting was fair even just due to mexico 2019 qualifying episode.
mystic one (@mysticus)
5th July 2020, 20:54
@esploratore alonso would disagree and call palmer i mean horner to tell about it :)
Kasim
5th July 2020, 17:43
Is it possible that hamilton may not have seen the yellow flag screen on the left? Or more importantly that it could have been out of his vision from within the cockpit?… because of course the footage is from a movable camera with a wide lense..
Balue (@balue)
5th July 2020, 18:44
So Hamilton lied he didn’t see it, Mercedes lied they didn’t have the footage, + the race director and stewards lied they didn’t have the footage. It’s really a scandal. Similar to lie-gate before.