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Thursday’s media day ahead of this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix was dominated by debate around the lap-52 incident in last Sunday’s race in the USA which saw Norris handed a podium-losing time penalty for an overtake on title rival Verstappen after a late-race battle over third place.
McLaren have since launched a right of review challenge in a bid to overturn the decision with an initial hearing set for 9.30pm UK time on Friday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
With F1’s overtaking guidelines, as well as the consistency of stewards’ decisions and penalties after several other controversial incidents during the Austin weekend, under the spotlight, seven-time world champion Hamilton said the sport needed to “level up on all areas” of officiating – and suggested that his old title rival’s approach to defending position should not be allowed. “It’s always been a grey area,” said Hamilton. “That’s why he’s got away with it for so long.
“They probably need to make some adjustments, for sure. Also, you do have inconsistencies on rulings, weekend in, weekend out, obviously depending on which stewards are there.
“As a sport, we do need to level up on all areas. You look at other global sports, they have full-time refs, and I’m sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing for our sport.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Hamilton drew a direct parallel between last Sunday’s controversy and his fierce wheel-to-wheel duels with Verstappen during their 2021 title fight – and that year’s Brazilian race in particular.
“It’s interesting people are talking about it now because the same thing happened to me in 2021,” said Hamilton.
“If you take Brazil into account, for example, under braking you’re ahead but then the car [on the inside] just comes off the brakes and doesn’t make the corner and you have to go wide. Then they’ll say you both went wide but you had no choice because you had to avoid a collision.
“There definitely has to be something done about it because it’s happening a lot now. You shouldn’t be able to come off the brakes, run more speed in, go off track and still hold your place.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine: “I think Austin highlighted that there is definitely something that’s got to be changed. There is the rule as it’s written and there is more the common sense on how you want to approach racing.
“There is this grey area at the moment which allow us drivers to benefit from the regulation in a kind of unfair way of approaching racing. And I think this is something which I guess we all agree and which will be worked on with the FIA on how to improve things because there have been a couple of incidents which got us on a split or with mixed feelings on the decision that came out of it. We all need some clarity and a bit better written rules to improve the racing for the future.
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