Hamilton handed five-place Monza grid drop after double-yellow breach on recon lap
Ferrari’s first Italian Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton will start with a cold splash of reality: a five-place grid penalty, the result of a stewards’ verdict that his speed under double-waved yellows at Zandvoort wasn’t cut “significantly.”
The decision, delivered after a lengthy post-race review, hinged on data. On his reconnaissance lap to the grid at the Dutch Grand Prix, Hamilton passed through a double-yellow marshalling sector at the final corner and into the pit entry at a speed only around 20kph slower than he’d managed at the same point in practice — when there were no yellows. The FIA compared its own telemetry with Ferrari’s and concluded the reduction wasn’t enough to satisfy the rulebook.
Complicating matters, Article 44.1 also requires drivers completing more than one recon lap to take the pit entry at a “greatly” reduced speed. The stewards didn’t think Hamilton did that either.
The penalty will bite at Monza — Ferrari’s home race — and it comes with the added sting of two penalty points on Hamilton’s licence, taking his total to two within a 12‑month window.
Several drivers were in the crosshairs for pre-race infringements at Zandvoort, including Max Verstappen and Lando Norris for delta time issues, but only Hamilton’s case drew a sanction. The panel said the guideline tariff for a double-yellow breach of this type is typically 10 grid places, but they trimmed it to five because Hamilton had made an attempt to slow — lifting, braking 70 metres earlier and backing off the throttle by 10–20% compared to clean laps.
That will be scant comfort for a driver who then compounded his Sunday with a crash in the wet at Turn 3, ending a weekend that had promised a step forward for Ferrari with a double DNF. “I’m sad for the team,” Hamilton said afterwards. “We wanted to get those points for the team today, and I honestly felt like I had the pace on the cars ahead of me, so I was hoping to see real progress in the race and then that happened.
“I feel fine mentally. I felt lots of positives. I felt like I was making progress. I was catching the car ahead and it’s tough to handle something like that for sure. I’ve been racing for so long, I could probably count on one hand that sort of incident for me. Apart from that, it’s been a really solid weekend… to come away with nothing is definitely painful.”
The stewarding rationale was forensic. With double-waved yellows pre-warned at the final corner to protect crews on the grid and in the pit lane, the expectation was clear: drivers must slow enough to be prepared to stop. Put simply, 20kph off his usual approach speed wasn’t viewed as “significant” in those conditions, and his pace into pit entry didn’t meet the “greatly” reduced threshold either.
The optics aren’t great for Ferrari. A low-drag Monza package tends to flatter cars with strong straight-line efficiency and clean execution, but Hamilton will start on the back foot before FP1 even turns a wheel. It heightens the importance of qualifying for teammate Charles Leclerc and increases the strategic burden on Ferrari’s pit wall to recover track position without tripping over midfield traffic.
There’s also the tone it sets. Hamilton’s Ferrari stint has felt like a slow burn so far — glimpses of pace, moments of promise — and Monza was supposed to be a flagship weekend for the tifosi. Instead, the seven-time champion arrives with a grid penalty and a reminder that F1’s margins aren’t just defined at 300kph; they’re defined in the gray areas before the lights go out, too.
Still, the stewards’ leniency — halving the usual grid drop — acknowledges intent, if not execution. And Hamilton’s own reading of the weekend suggests the raw speed is edging closer. If Ferrari’s race pace holds up and the strategy is sharp, five places at Monza isn’t a death sentence. It’s just a harder day’s work in front of the most demanding grandstand in motorsport.
What’s certain: the Scuderia will need a cleaner Saturday, a bold Sunday, and a driver in Hamilton who — penalty or not — tends to come alive when the stakes are public and the backdrop is red.
