The stewards have cleared Lewis Hamilton of impeding Alexander Albon during the first practice session.
The Williams driver complained his rival got in his way after catching the Ferrari in the 190kph turn 17.
Hamilton’s race engineer Ricardo Adami told him “Albon, four”, indicating he had a car four seconds behind him, as he approached the turn 16 and 17 chicane. Albon swerved right to avoid Hamilton’s car, telling his team the incident was: “fucking dangerous.”
The stewards examined footage and data from the incident and spoke to both drivers after the session. They decided the incident was not serious enough to deserve a penalty, given that it occured in practice.
“As agreed with the teams, unless the impeding during free practice was such that it could be regarded as dangerous, there will be no penalty for such impeding,” they explained.
“During the hearing, the driver of car 23 [Albon] felt that he had the car under control at all times and while he was impeded, he did not consider the situation to be dangerous.
“He had seen car 44 [Hamilton] in front of him during the corner before. However, he did not expect car 44 to be in the position on track that he was in and that shocked the driver of car 23 as he approached turn 17 and had to take evasive action.”
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The stewards indicated Albon felt the incident was less serious afterwards. “While his immediate reaction when the incident occurred was to say that it was dangerous, having looked at it subsequently, he agreed that it was not.”
Albon’s team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr also complained one of the Ferrari drivers let him past on a “dangerous” part of the track during the first practice session. The stewards did not investigate that incident.
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