Hamilton cleared by stewards after alleged yellow flags breach

Lewis Hamilton has avoided a five-place grid penalty after stewards announced there would be no further action for allegedly ignoring waved double-yellow flags.

Hamilton was summoned after FP3 after appearing to not lift for Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri that had moved over to let the Mercedes go.

In its official decision, stewards said that at no point was there a yellow flag on the Mercedes driver’s dashboard and that the light panel was activated at marshal post six accidentally for less than a second.

“The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 44 (Lewis Hamilton), the team representative and have reviewed video and the marshalling system,” the statement read.

“The Race Director reported to the Stewards that the double yellow flag warning on the FIA Marshalling System was activated at Light Panel Number 6 accidentally, for less than 1 second. As the on-board video of Car 44 (to be released by the Commercial Rights Holder following this Decision) clearly shows, there was no yellow flag displayed, no yellow lights were displayed to that driver and the yellow warning light was not visible on the driver’s steering wheel.

“Unlike other incidents this year, there was no yellow flag or yellow light displayed to the driver (the driver already being well into the marshalling sector when the system was briefly activated) hence no breach of the regulations has occurred.”

Verstappen was handed a five-place penalty at the last race in Qatar for a similar yellow flag offence. The Dutchman was found to have ignored double waved yellows out of the final corner.

Hamilton was also summoned for impeding another driver after Nikita Mazepin was forced to take avoiding action at Turn 8 on a hot lap to avoid an accident though no action has been announced on that yet.