Hamilton fumes at stewarding as penalty looms

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Lewis Hamilton has complained about "bloody ridiculous" stewarding as he sits on the verge of a ten-place grid penalty.

The defending champion was penalised for reversing slightly in the pit lane in Bahrain at the end of qualifying, receiving a reprimand for the incident. Hamilton was then given another reprimand for not rejoining the track properly during Q1 in Russia, and as both were driving infringements he is now one reprimand away from a penalty.

The Bahrain incident still angers Hamilton, who believes the stewards are being unnecessarily harsh.

"I’m just aware that there most likely could be a ten-place penalty because I’ve got one more reprimand to go," Hamilton said. "The last one was bloody ridiculous.

"It’s quite funny you know, when I was in karting there was one steward who was just there to make everyone’s weekend a bad weekend and I’m starting to have reminiscent experiences…

"It’s like families would turn up, paying so much money to be there, and there’s this one guy, a complete arsehole, who was there to ruin everyone’s weekend and I’m starting to see signs of him…"

In Russia Hamilton was also hit by a number of reliability issues, and he admits another concern of his is his engine allocation this season.

"I fought hard through that race and pulled myself back up there but unfortunately I wasn’t able to race for the win, which I believe I had a chance to win. That’s the only thing in my mind although obviously I am running out of engines as races go by, so that is what I am thinking."

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AS IT HAPPENED: 2016 Russian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.