Lewis Hamilton F1 pit lane speeding penalty Martin Brundle dubbed as ‘harsh’ questioned

Sky Sports F1 pundit Anthony Davidson has questioned the five-second time penalty issued to Lewis Hamilton for pit-lane speeding at the Hungarian Grand Prix. 

Seven-time world champion Hamilton was hit with his second penalty in two days - and fourth in the past three race weekends - after the stewards found he had exceeded the 80km/h pit lane speed limit by just 0.1km/h during Sunday’s race at the Hungaroring. 

Hamilton finished fourth on the road but the penalty dropped him to fifth behind Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc once it was applied after he crossed the line. 

Analysing the incident on the SkyPad, former F1 driver Davidson said he could not see what Hamilton did wrong. 

“I’ve looked at this so many times and I can’t work out why he gets a penalty,” Davidson said during Sky Sports F1’s coverage of the Hungarian Grand Prix. 

“For me, he slows down sufficiently well. We’ve got this marker board on the left-hand side that stipulates the 80km /h speed limit. I don’t see that [speeding].

“Let’s have a look at the exit. Obviously knew he was under time pressure to get out in that race with Antonelli. Again, for me, it sounds like he releases the pit lane button on the line itself.

“This guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to white lines and when to press the button. Maybe there was just an error when he was a bit too close to the line on the actual speed of the car and they were just pinged by that. Who knows.

“Strange that it only happened that one time. I don’t have enough data here and I can only go by the sound of when he’s pressing that button. For me, it looked totally fine on the way in, and on the way out.” 

Fellow ex-grand prix driver turned Sky Sports F1 analyst Martin Brundle described the penalty as “harsh”, but acknowledged the rules have to be black-and-white. 

“It’s like being a quarter of a kilo underweight. You’re going to feel aggrieved, but the rules are the rules in that respect,” Brundle said. 

“Where my alarm bells are going off is in Monaco, where a lot of drivers there were getting this 0.1 [over the speed limit], and then of course we had all the shenanigans after the race. 

“They set their pit limiters throughout the weekend, they aim at 59 and a bit if its a 60kp/h limit, or 79 and a bit. They really fine-tune it. We see a lot of penalties on a Friday, a few hungered euros for going over the pit lane speed limit.

“But it’s perceived as a competitive advantage, and when you see how close those lines are with Antonelli for example, if somebody goes ‘0.1’s alright, so 0.3’s alright’ then suddenly you get ahead. 

“So there has to be a cut-off point. Whether it’s the width of the car, the weight of the car, the speed of the car in the pit lane. 

“It’s painful and it’s harsh but it’s the rules, as long as he was actually doing that speed, which they weren’t in Monaco.”