Penalty Fiesta in Sepang: Who Dropped How Many Places, and Why Ferrari Is Paying for a Broken Mirror
Hadjar, Colapinto and Lindblad learned engines aren’t infinite, while Hamilton learned a broken mirror plus a silent radio is an expensive combination for Ferrari.
While most fans were watching the rain and the self-stalling engines, the stewards in Sepang were running their own parallel race — deciding which drivers would be punished before Sunday even began. The result: a string of reshuffled grid slots and one fine for Ferrari that sounds small until you read why it was handed out.
Hadjar, Colapinto and Lindblad pay for their engines
Isack Hadjar took a five-place grid penalty, while Franco Colapinto and Arvid Lindblad also dropped down the order — all for the same reason: exceeding their allocated power unit component pool for the 2026 season. In other words, F1 engines come with a limited mileage, much like a used car, and all three had spent theirs ahead of schedule.
Hamilton, a broken mirror and a silent radio
The real small-print drama came from Friday. During a practice session, Lewis Hamilton was crawling through Turn 9 on a cooldown lap when Gabriel Bortoleto arrived from behind at roughly 240km/h on a push lap. Hamilton drifted onto the racing line at exactly the wrong moment, forcing the Brazilian to brake hard and take evasive action.
The stewards decided Hamilton himself was more victim than culprit — his right-hand mirror was damaged, and his team never warned him over the radio about a much faster car approaching. The result: just a warning for the driver.
Ferrari foots the bill
For Ferrari, there was no such leniency. The stewards were blunt that the team is obligated to warn its driver of faster approaching cars regardless of whether those cars are on a push lap — and fined the team €10,000.
The team should have provided appropriate radio warnings of significantly faster approaching cars, irrespective of whether those cars were on a push lap or not.
None of it stopped Hamilton finishing third on Sunday, which makes the whole saga more of an amusing footnote than real drama. But “broken mirror plus silent radio” is exactly the kind of small failure that costs teams more points than a bad upgrade ever could.
Based on reporting by PlanetF1 and GPFans.
