Hamilton hit with grid penalty for his impeding incident with Verstappen

On the back of a brilliant performance in qualifying at Monte Carlo, Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton has been hit with a three-place grid penalty for his impeding incident with reigning champion Max Verstappen.

In the opening qualifying segment, Max Verstappen was on a flying lap and was heading up the hill towards Massenet when he was blocked by Lewis Hamilton. The incident forced the reigning champion to back out of his lap, but it did not have any consequence as his previous lap times easily secured him a place in Q2.

The radio communication between Hamilton and his race engineer Riccardo Adami revealed that the Italian informed the seven-time F1 champion that Verstappen was approaching, but was then mistakenly told the Red Bull driver was slowing down.

Both drivers and their team representatives were summoned by the FIA race stewards straight after qualifying. The stewards have now confirmed that Hamilton has been hit with a three-place grid penalty for the incident.

Despite his best result in a standard qualifying session in 2025, Hamilton will drop down the order to P7 while Verstappen, Isack Hadjar and Fernando Alonso will all move up the grid by a place.

The stewards noted: "The The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 44 (Lewis Hamilton), the driver of Car 1 (Max Verstappen), team representatives and reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.

"Car 44 was on a slow lap and off the racing line as he was approaching Turn 2. Car 1 was approaching Car 44 on a push lap. The team first informed the driver of Car 44 that Car 1 was on a fast lap.

"Then they sent another message saying that Car 1 was ‘slowing down’ when in fact Car 1 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 1 entering Turn 3.

"Car 1 had to react to Car 44 appearing to move into the racing line. This meant that Car 1 had to move off the usual racing line and the push lap had to be aborted by Car 1.

"We carefully examined the racing line taken by Car 1 in previous laps at the same area and determined that Car 44 did in fact enter the racing line that Car 1 used in previous push laps. This put it beyond doubt that Car 1 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.

"We therefore impose the standard penalty of a drop of 3 grid positions."