Ferrari’s radio mix-up leaves Hamilton fuming over Mexico penalty
Ferrari’s pit wall has some explaining to do after Lewis Hamilton was left confused — and angry — by a 10-second penalty that flipped his Mexico City Grand Prix.
The flashpoint came early. On Lap 6, Hamilton and Max Verstappen were wheel-to-wheel into Turn 4. Hamilton pinched a brake on the dusty entry, skipped across the grass, and rejoined ahead. He didn’t take the escape route along the yellow line, because at that speed he couldn’t make it. The stewards accepted that part. What they didn’t accept was the lasting advantage: Hamilton popped out eight-tenths clear of Verstappen and didn’t hand the place back. Standard cut-and-dry sanction.
Somehow, that fairly straightforward call turned murky on the Ferrari radio.
“We have 10 second penalty for the incident at Turn 4 with Verstappen. We don’t agree,” race engineer Riccardo Adami told Hamilton.
That framing — “for the incident” — set the tone. Instead of clarifying the misdemeanour, it muddied it. Sky’s Karun Chandhok called it out in real time: “That’s poor communication because you’ve unnecessarily riled up the driver without giving him all of the facts… He’s not been given a penalty for the incident; he’s been given the penalty because he gained time.”
Hamilton’s onboard reaction wasn’t subtle. “That’s such **** man. The grip is so small there. The grip there is so low,” he snapped, still processing a sanction he thought was tied to contact rather than the shortcut.
To be fair to Hamilton, the first laps were scrappy across the board. Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli all scampered over the grass at Turn 1 at the start. Hamilton and Verstappen had already traded paint in the opening complex. None of that drew penalties. This one did — because the Ferrari rejoined ahead and stayed there.
Post-race, Hamilton’s comments carried the same confusion that started on the radio. “It felt like racing,” he said of the squeeze with Verstappen. “I was fine there. It’s just the cutting, and then I’m the only one to get a 10-second penalty. I pinched the right front. I went to go down the exit road, but it’s like the dustiest place on Earth, and then I couldn’t slow the car down, so I ended up cutting the grass.”
The stewards’ verdict made the logic explicit: Car 44 locked up, left the track, rejoined through the grass toward Turn 5, couldn’t follow the prescribed route due to excess speed (so no breach there), but did gain a lasting advantage by overtaking Car 1 and not ceding the position. “The standard penalty for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage is therefore imposed.”
The more interesting question is strategic: why didn’t Ferrari tell Hamilton to immediately hand the place back to mitigate the risk? Chandhok floated it from the commentary box, and it’s the kind of in-the-moment decision top teams live by. Give it back, reset, fight on. Instead, Ferrari’s message insinuated injustice and the penalty stuck.
The timing compounded the damage. Hamilton served the 10 seconds at his Lap 23 stop, dropping from a comfortable third to 14th, and spent the rest of the afternoon dragging the car back to P8 at the flag. In the midfield mess, Verstappen had his hands full with George Russell and Oliver Bearman for a moment — Bearman even got the jump in the shuffle — but the head-to-head that mattered had already been decided by Race Control and a few sentences over the radio.
Yes, the AutĂłdromo Hermanos RodrĂguez is treacherous offline — just ask anyone who tried braking on the marbles into Turn 4 — but rules are rules, and this one’s been consistent for years. Leave the track, keep the spot, and you’re paying for it unless you give it back.
None of this is season-defining in isolation, but it’s exactly the kind of operational detail Ferrari can’t afford to flub with Hamilton in the car. The margins are tight at the front. If you’re not winning the small moments — the explanations, the resets, the tiny tactical sacrifices — you’re losing seconds and places. Sunday in Mexico, Ferrari lost both.
The takeaway is simple. The penalty wasn’t for clattering wheels with Verstappen. It wasn’t for missing the escape route. It was for the advantage gained when Hamilton cut the corner and stayed in front. Had he been told that cleanly — and told to give it back immediately — this probably reads as a footnote rather than a headline.
Instead, it’s another Monday with more questions for the red pit wall than answers.
