Hamilton handed grid penalty for Dutch GP

Lewis Hamilton will start the Dutch Grand Prix from 15th after receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding Sergio Pérez in qualifying.

The Mercedes driver set the 12th fastest time on Saturday at Zandvoort after struggling with the balance of his car.

During the opening session of qualifying he was caught on the outside of the track at Turn 9 as Perez approached on a fast lap.

The stewards deemed Hamilton impeded the Red Bull driver, who had to abort his lap, and issued him with a grid penalty.

“The driver of Car 44 [Hamilton], being on an in lap, was informed by the team that Car 11 [Perez] was approaching on a fast lap when he entered Turn 8,” the stewards’ statement said.

“He then drove off line at the exit of Turn 8 with the intention to give way for Car 11.

“However, when Car 11 arrived, Car 44 had already entered Turn 9 and drove back towards the racing line at the exit of Turn 9, thereby clearly impeding Car 11.

“The stewards determine that, whilst there has been appropriate warning by the team and albeit the driver tried to move out of the way, he could have slowed down more in order not to impede the other car and therefore consider the impeding to be unnecessary in the sense of the regulations. Therefore a grid drop is applied in line with previous decisions.”

Speaking before the penalty was issued, Hamilton described his qualifying session as a “nightmare.”

“We changed the car [setup] quite a lot and it was a nightmare today,” he said. “The car was massively snappy. Yesterday was a lot of understeer and then we tried to dial that out and went too far the other way.

“It just went downhill like a domino effect from the moment with Checo [Perez]. Then the balance just got more and more snappy, more and more oversteer-y. It was terrible.”