Lewis Hamilton has been moved back three places on the grid for the Monaco Grand Prix for impeding Max Verstappen during qualifying.
The stewards ruled Ferrari gave Hamilton an incorrect radio message during the session by telling him Verstappen was not on a flying lap, which meant Hamilton did not have to give him space.Verstappen was driving flat-out, however, and pointed out Hamilton held him up when they reached Massenet in Q1.
“Massive impeding, that,” he told race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase on his radio.
The stewards said the fact Hamilton’s team made an error with their communication did not mean he should avoid a penalty.
“Car 44 [Hamilton] was on a slow lap and off the racing line as he was approaching turn two,” they explained. “Car one [Verstappen] was approaching car 44 on a push lap.
“The team first informed the driver of car 44 that car one was on a fast lap. Then they sent another message saying that car one was ‘slowing down’ when in fact car one was always on a push lap and was not ‘slowing down’ as suggested by the team. This resulted in car 44 speeding up and moving into the racing line of car one entering turn three.
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“Car one had to react to car 44 appearing to move into the racing line. This meant that car one had to move off the usual racing line and the push lap had to be aborted by car one. We carefully examined the racing line taken by car one in previous laps at the same area and determined that car 44 did in fact enter the racing line that car one used in previous push laps. This put it beyond doubt that car one was impeded.
“The driver of car 44 expressed his displeasure at the incorrect message from the team immediately after the incident. During the hearing, the fact of the team’s incorrect message leading to the incident was accepted by the driver of car 44.
“As with previous incidents of this nature where a driver has received inaccurate or incomplete information resulting in a car impeding another, the fact that the radio message was the cause of the impeding does not amount to a mitigating factor.”
Verstappen agreed Hamilton was not to blame for the incident. “Of course at the time you see the car blocking you and when you’re there at high speed, it’s not nice,” he told Sky. “But then I saw immediately that the team told him that I was driving slow, while I was clearly driving fast.
“So it’s not Lewis’s fault. I quickly chatted to Lewis already about it. It’s very simple, but of course it can’t happen. But that’s the team’s mistake.”
However Verstappen said past precedent for how stewards have handled similar incidents shows Hamilton had to be penalised.
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“If you look at the history of things, yes, but again, it’s more the team’s fault,” he said. “But unfortunately in qualifying, of course, they normally are quite strict on these things.”
Hamilton said he began to pick up his speed after he was told Verstappen was not on a flying lap behind him.
“I think I was doing a good job of staying out of the way of everyone,” said Hamilton. “But the team said that Max was on a fast lap, so I was to the left, but then they said he was not on a fast lap.
“So I was just about to get back on the power, I accelerated for 10 metres or something. I was off the line but for sure distracted him.”
The penalty drops Hamilton from fourth to seventh on the grid. Verstappen, Isack Hadjar and Fernando Alonso move up in his place.
Updated 2025 Monaco Grand Prix grid
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2025 Monaco Grand Prix
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Alex
24th May 2025, 17:26
It will cost at least a one grid penalty, for sure.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
24th May 2025, 17:37
Given their respective grid positions I feel the stewards will take the easy option and give Ham a 1 place drop.
Ajaxn
24th May 2025, 17:43
Yeah, it will likely mean swapping his 4th place for Verstappen’s 5th.
erikje (@erikje)
24th May 2025, 17:48
No chance. Rules are rules and it’s a 3 place drop. Simple.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
24th May 2025, 17:57
What should happen and what does happen are often not the same in F1. Especially with “marquee” drivers.
N
24th May 2025, 17:59
It usually depends on wether it affected anyone’s session, if Verstappen went out because of it, i would expect a penalty, subsequently he didn’t, he’s just asking for a penalty because Hamilton is ahead on the grid, nothing more, nothing less.
Kata
25th May 2025, 7:05
Nothing to do with going out of it or not. From the moment you are hindered it’s impeding and that goes for every driver without any exception. The only thing that could be said in favor of the driver, in this case Hamilton, is that it was a team error and not a drivers one.
N
25th May 2025, 10:41
Which of course is nonsense, there are many many examples of drivers not being penalised when the affected driver still made it through the session.
Hamilton got a penalty here because Verstappen got overly dramatic on the radio about it, and because Redbull would have complained about it given they stood to gain from Hamilton losing places. If Verstappen didn’t make a fuss about it at the time, and Qualified ahead of Hamilton in Q3, nothing would have been done about this.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
24th May 2025, 18:13
Looks like they’ve gone with giving the standard penalty. I am surprised!
erikje (@erikje)
24th May 2025, 18:19
Why? It was the obvious result the moment it happened.
falken (@falken)
24th May 2025, 18:37
Because the FIA has form for inventing special new rules like “crossing the track while brown” just to punish HAM
Jere (@jerejj)
24th May 2025, 18:26
Unsurprising
BLS (@brightlampshade)
24th May 2025, 18:35
….because the number of times the specified penalty is not the penalty given out? Been numerous occurances this season already.
André
24th May 2025, 18:42
Lewis needs a sharp, no nonsense race engineer. Adami doesn’t inspire me confidence.
US_Peter (@us_peter)
25th May 2025, 2:35
He’s no Peter Bonnington, that’s for sure. But their working relationship is still young. Hopefully their communication will improve as they continue to get to know each other. Not that that would’ve helped in this case. Though I’m not sure it’s the race engineer’s responsibility to know where other cars are… could be there are other engineers telling the race engineer who’s coming up behind. The race engineer is already looking at a lot of data. Anyone know how this works?
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
25th May 2025, 4:48
Bono and Adami are not really very good race engineers.
Russell’s & Max’s race engineer are far better examples. Bono hasn’t achieved anything interesting on his own, except that he was lucky to be paired with MSC and HAM. Now he’s trying to shepherd Toto’s next king-to-be. The only way that works is if Russell gets the screw like Ham did the previous 3 years.
Matthijs (@matthijs)
24th May 2025, 18:44
Why are these rules so harsh? We talk about Q1, not Q3. It did not affect Verstappen in any way, since he proceeded to Q2.
N
24th May 2025, 19:09
1/ Because Verstappen cried on the radio, as most drivers do when they see Hamilton in their vicinity, and 2/ Because Hamilton outqualified him. Bet your very last penny had Verstappen qualified P4 and Hamilton P5, nothing would have been done about it.
BMW P85 V10
24th May 2025, 21:06
Not only Max does it. Every driver does it.
I guess you haven’t heard or read that Max said that Hamilton was not to blame because his engineer told him Max was slowing down. It’s always convenient to leave out facts if you want to bash on someone.
N
24th May 2025, 21:55
It’s convenient to leave out facts when they aren’t relevant. I said Verstappen cried on the radio (before he was made aware of the facts). Crying on the radio is going to get the stewards attention much more than saying nothing and just getting on with it. Look at Hamiltons response on the radio when he crashes because of traffic on the racing line in FP3, and look any _anyones_ response when they see Hamilton anywhere near them when something happens to affect them.
Nikos (@exeviolthor)
25th May 2025, 8:06
It is very difficult to write rules that cover all circumstances. Note that in many cases losing a fast lap also means that you lose a set of tyres.
MichaelN
24th May 2025, 19:12
That radio message was eye-roll inducing to hear and read on the Highlights video. Amateur hour from Adami.
But, even if it’s just Q1, it’s fair enough to give the penalty. I’d rather they didn’t, but this is the way they’ve decided to go about it and – well – Ferrari just needed to do a better job.
David BR (@david-br)
24th May 2025, 19:39
So is 1 place or 3 places standard? Do FIA just toss a coin or ask Red Bull what they think before deciding? I’m presuming the latter.
Ideals (@ideals)
24th May 2025, 19:56
Three places is standard, if you’re asking why it was 1 place for a practice session compared to 3 for a qualifying, I presume the answer is obvious.
David BR (@david-br)
24th May 2025, 21:40
@ideals Verstappen got a one place grid drop in Qatar 2024 for impeding. Hence not so obvious.
THP
24th May 2025, 23:42
In Qatar 2024 the stewards handed Verstappen a grid penalty for driving unnecessarily slowly. It was only a one grid place penalty because neither driver (Russell being the other driver) was on a push lap.
So again: pretty obvious.
An Sionnach
25th May 2025, 2:28
No. Verstappen got the one place grid drop when George was not on a timed lap. He was watching the delta ahead. Bizarre penalty that seemed made up just for this. Stewarding last year was sometimes very poor. It is much improved this year…
BasCB (@bascb)
24th May 2025, 21:19
Yeah, as @ideals mentions, the standard penalty for impeding in qualifying is a grid drop of 3 spots (and a point on your licence), you might notice that Stroll also got a 3 spot grid drop for the incident with Gasly in qualifying while he got a 1 spot grid drop for the free practice incident (although that second penalty actually won”t influence where he starts as he qualified so far down and Bearman will be behind him in any case due to his 10 spot grid penalty
David BR (@david-br)
24th May 2025, 21:41
@bascb see above.
SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
24th May 2025, 19:44
Adami is a freakin’ amateur and should had been released from his job years ago.
Anon A. Mouse
24th May 2025, 20:54
This incident is the logical result of the Ferrari communication issues I brought up some weeks ago:
Well, here we are again. Monaco is the most demanding in terms of prompt, coherent, and unambiguous communications between driver and team. Ferrari continues to drop the ball with botched messaging – Adami specifically with his corrective and confusing messages. You would expect that with how F1 teams operate it would be imperative conduct post mortem analyses on areas that are continually bad. Ferrari, for whatever reason (cultural inertia perhaps), refuses to commit to change for even the lowest hanging fruit.
BMW P85 V10
24th May 2025, 21:13
I think your right on the cultural aspect. It’s not just the engineer. It’s all of the human structure behind that engineer.
that doesn’t mean Adami wasn’t at fault this time, but the working conditions/ environment are contributing as well.
Polweiss
25th May 2025, 6:33
Right , HAM should learn Italian as others did..
N
25th May 2025, 10:44
Like Schumacher and Raikkonen?
Anon A. Mouse
25th May 2025, 13:22
I might be inclined to agree if
1) English wasn’t the lingua franca of Formula 1 and
2) Hamilton wasn’t already trying to learn Italian.
The problem is, switching to Italian doesn’t resolve the core issue of Ferrari delivering inaccurate and/or unnecessary information.
F1 fan
24th May 2025, 21:15
The amount of coping in the comments jfc. Car A impedes Car B on a flying lap. Car A gets standard 3 place grid.
How’s that hard? My God.
Ferdi
25th May 2025, 11:03
Pretty straight fwd indeed. Lewis and Max talked about straight after quali and there was consensus there was no blame on either of them, Lewis got ill informed. Penalty is standard one.
David B
24th May 2025, 21:17
These rules are so stupid. It happened in Q1.. both cars made it to Q3.
japioooo
25th May 2025, 10:10
Even better, let’s get rid of all penalty’s and only apply them when they have an effect on the outcome.
bosyber (@bosyber)
25th May 2025, 6:50
I do think in this case it is pretty harsh, but the reason the team misinforming the driver isn’t a mitigating factor is at least partly the streak of Haas (was it 2018? 19?) impeding incidents where they appeared to just not say anything about upcoming fast cars to their driver(s) at all; and a mere fine for the team just wasn’t enough incentive to cure that.
Also, while here the impeded driver wasn’t much hindered in the end, I do think it right that teams and drivers just internalize that impeding is a no go, and for tracks like Monaco that is of course extra true. In context of the demands of striking drivers’ times when they crash or cause a yellow flag that hinder others’ laps, it doesn’t make sense to go soft with this issue.
Wallbreaker (@wallbreaker)
25th May 2025, 12:48
What baffles me is not that Lewis got a three-place grid drop (which seems harsh but is consistent with previous penalties) but rather that Stroll is getting away with just one place for much more dangerous behaviour.
Wallbreaker (@wallbreaker)
25th May 2025, 12:50
Edit: Just saw Stroll also getting a three place grid drop for impeding which is even more nonsensical given what happened in practice. So you’re getting a harsher penalty because it’s qualifying and not for the severity of the incident?