Lewis Hamilton hit with three-place Monaco GP grid drop for blocking Max Verstappen in Qualifying

Hamilton joins Ollie Bearman and Lance Stroll in being penalised – the Haas rookie docked 10 places for a red flag breach in practice and the Aston Martin racer sanctioned twice for an FP1 clash with Charles Leclerc and an impeding incident in Qualifying.

“Car 44 (Hamilton) was on a slow lap and off the racing line as he was approaching Turn 2,” read the stewards’ decision document. “Car 1 (Verstappen) was approaching Car 44 on a push lap.

“The team first informed the driver of Car 44 that Car 1 was on a fast lap. Then they sent another message saying that Car 1 was ‘slowing down’ when in fact Car 1 was always on a push lap and was not ‘slowing down’ as suggested by the team. This resulted in Car 44 speeding up and moving into the racing line of Car 1 entering Turn 3.

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“Car 1 had to react to Car 44 appearing to move into the racing line. This meant that Car 1 had to move off the usual racing line and the push lap had to be aborted by Car 1.

“We carefully examined the racing line taken by Car 1 in previous laps at the same area and determined that Car 44 did in fact enter the racing line that Car 1 used in previous push laps. This put it beyond doubt that Car 1 was impeded.