Lewis Hamilton receives three-place penalty on Hungarian GP grid for blocking Oscar Piastri

Lewis Hamilton received a three-place grid penalty for the Hungarian Grand Prix for impeding Oscar Piastri on the McLaren driver’s last Q3 lap.

Hamilton, 41, initially qualified in second but will drop down to fifth for Sunday’s race start. After completing his flying Q3 lap, Hamilton was driving “at a significantly reduced speed on the racing line” when Piastri was starting a push lap, according to the stewards.

The Ferrari driver said in the post-race news conference that he was told Piastri was on a flying lap “literally when he was at the apex behind me, so I had no idea he was coming.” Hamilton told the stewards that due to where his car was positioned on Hungaroring, Piastri wasn’t “visible in his mirrors”.

Because the Briton was the first out, he was under the impression that the other drivers in Q3 had already completed their laps and that team-mate Charles Leclerc “was the car that was behind me when I left the pit lane.”

“Yeah,” Hamilton said. “Crazy, because it had been clean and obviously it wasn’t intentional.”

Here’s the incident Hamilton was penalised for 👀#F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/OBspvmBdGx

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 25, 2026

Piastri told Sky Sports after qualifying that “it was just Lewis not looking in his mirrors” and that “the yellow flag wasn’t my problem”. Between Hamilton’s impeding and the yellow flag triggered by Max Verstappen, the Australian couldn’t “get a lap in either way”, despite the car being quick.

Because Hamilton impeded him, Piastri had “to take avoiding action by running wide and being obliged to abort the lap.”

It comes on a weekend where McLaren brought a notable upgrade package, though pole sitter Lando Norris said, “It doesn’t feel that different. But it certainly seems to be going a little bit quicker, and that’s always a good thing.”

Norris managed to edge ahead of Hamilton by 0.012 seconds to take his first pole position of the season — and the first non-Mercedes pole position of 2026. The Silver Arrows, meanwhile, had a tricky day, with championship leader Kimi Antonelli initially qualifying fourth and George Russell down in seventh.

Russell needed to come to a stop at the end of Q3, rather than returning to the parc fermé area, due to a water leak, team boss Toto Wolff told Sky Sports. Mercedes later confirmed that it will change his engine, his fourth of the season (and within allocation), ahead of Sunday’s race.

Meanwhile, Antonelli is under investigation for an alleged yellow flag infringement, regarding his flying lap when Verstappen had a spin and triggered yellow flags.