The Italian GP wasn’t the best race weekend Lewis Hamilton has had this season. His teammate George Russell had the upper hand on him throughout the weekend. While the young Brit qualified in P4, Hamilton was down in P8—with the McLaren of Oscar Piastri ahead of him and Lando Norris right behind. With Mercedes’ promising race pace, he was confident about making up places. Although that did happen, it didn’t pan out as Hamilton planned.

As the lights went out, Norris jumped the seven-time champion off the line, and for what seemed like almost the entire race, he was stuck behind the two McLarens in P9. Towards the end, though, a questionable move on Piastri had the Lewis Hamilton Army turning on their hero.

Lewis Hamilton was unaffected despite his crimes against Oscar Piastri

Despite having the upper hand on McLaren in terms of race pace, Hamilton just couldn’t get his W14 close enough to Piastri in front to make a move. But on Lap 41 of 51, the 38-year-old finally got the opportunity and went side-by-side with the Aussie rookie through Curva Grande (Turn 3). At the braking point for Turn 4, though, Hamilton didn’t leave Piastri enough room and made contact, damaging the McLaren’s front wing.

While Hamilton continued his race like nothing had happened, Piastri had to make an extra pitstop to change his $150,000-worth front wing, which ruined his chance at scoring points. In light of the incident, Hamilton received a five-second penalty. Because he continued without damage and was significantly faster than everyone behind him, he created a buffer of more than five seconds after assuming P6. So, the penalty didn’t really affect his race.

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When asked about the incident in a post-race interview, Piastri said, “He apologized, and the stewards gave that a penalty. I can’t ask for anything other than that. I think he just moved a bit too far to the right. But I think it’s very easy to do in that corner, it’s very narrow.” Despite Piastri forgiving Hamilton for his crimes, the LH Army couldn’t help but turn against their idol for ruining the Aussie driver’s race and expressed their disapproval on Twitter.

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Lewis Hamilton was “100%” at fault, and his penalty “wasn’t nearly enough”

Considering Hamilton came out unscathed, scored 8 points, wasn’t affected by the penalty, and ruined Piastri’s race, the LH Army was less than thrilled with their hero. Even though Hamilton accepted his mistake as soon as he turned in on Piastri, saying to his team, “I didn’t give him enough space,” that didn’t give Piastri his race back. Twitteratis expressed how Hamilton’s move wasn’t fair, and the penalty didn’t do justice.

One user wrote how Hamilton’s wheel-to-wheel action is never clean.

Most users also appreciated Piastri’s mature attitude to forgive Hamilton for ruining his race.

What were your thoughts on the contact between Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri? Was the five-second penalty enough?

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