Lewis Hamilton has been summoned to the Formula 1 stewards after allegedly impeding Liam Lawson during second practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The Ferrari driver was caught harvesting energy through the final sector in Baku on Friday, whereas Lawson was on a hot lap aboard his Racing Bulls.
It meant the Kiwi closed quickly and was forced into avoidant action at the penultimate corner, before Lawson was straight onto team radio complaining about the incident.
“Oh my god, that is so **** dangerous,” he stated.
“Yeah, agree,” was the response from his race engineer Alexandre Iliopoulos.
So Lawson and Hamilton were summoned to the stewards at 5:30pm local time in the Euro-Asian country and if a penalty is given, it’s likely to be a grid drop for the world champion.
An FIA statement read: “Alleged breach of Article B4.1.1 of the FIA F1 regulations - Car 44 (Hamilton) allegedly impeding Car 30 (Lawson) in Turn 19 at 16:33.”
The increased closing speeds are a direct result of the new-for-2026 regulations, where managing energy is key due to the increased reliance on electric power.
But each car will have a differing state of battery and Hamilton pointed this out when questioned about the incident after FP2.
"I'm sure we're going to talk about it in the drivers' briefing." said the Briton. "With the rules that the FIA gave us this year, when you come into the weekend, there's no data or simulations to say, 'okay, when you come to the last corner and you go to full throttle and you have 500bhp less than the car behind you on the lap, this is the gap you need to have.
"They don't tell you the closing speed that you're going to have. I was four seconds ahead, basically.
"When it's the last corner pushing, I could see him, I thought the gap was enough, I got to full throttle. Literally as I got into [Turn] 18, the car just died. Swamped up the gap massively and that could happen to anyone.
"So I think it's having clearer guidelines, because none of the drivers want to get in trouble, none of them are trying to get in the way, our sole goal is to get out of the way and to get our lap."
