Hamilton will speak to FIA officials over Verstappen crash partial blame

Lewis Hamilton wants to speak with FIA officials after Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix stewards declared he “could have done more to avoid” the Budapest crash with Max Verstappen.

The stewards for last weekend’s event in Budapest deemed the late-race incident between the pair to be worthy of no further action after Verstappen was launched skywards and lost a place to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc behind as he rejoined the track at the Hungaroring’s first corner.

The stewards declared the incident warranted no further action after speaking to both drivers post-race and checking the telemetry data on their cars.

While they dismissed Verstappen’s insistence “to be a typical case of ‘changing direction under braking’”, they also stated Hamilton “could have done more to avoid the collision”.

“Accordingly, we determine that no driver was predominantly to blame,” read the FIA document concerning the matter, released last Sunday night.

Now F1 has reconvened at Spa for this weekend’s Belgian GP, when asked if he was surprised by this statement, Hamilton replied: “Yes, very much so. I was really surprised by it.

“Already I was very relaxed about the situation, saying, ‘look, it’s just a racing incident, let’s just move on’.

“But considering one car was in control and one car was not in control at the time… obviously when all the wheels are locked, you’re not in control.

“If you look at the replay, at the end of the whole move I’m very far from the apex. So, I’ve left a lot of room on the right-hand side. I really was very surprised.

“I don’t know who typed it up, but probably, yeah that will be a question when I speak to them at some stage.”

Hamilton and Verstappen were filmed shaking hands in the post-race media pen in Hungary, where they vowed to discuss the incident, with the Mercedes driver saying his decision to interrupt an interview his Red Bull rival was conducting was to “break the ice” as he walked by.

Watch: F1 Belgian Grand Prix – News from Spa’s Paddock

Verstappen vaguely said at Spa on Thursday that “we explained our vision and after that, we went home”, but Hamilton then claimed, “no, we didn’t talk afterwards”.

“We went to the stewards and that’s it,” the seven-time world champion added. “We’ve not had [a] talk. I don’t know if we will. If we get time, maybe we’ll talk on the [drivers’]…