SPIELBERG, Austria: Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of reducing Sebastian Vettel’s 14-points lead in this year’s drivers’ world championship suffered a setback late Friday (Saturday in Manila) when he was handed a five-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. The penalty is the regulation mandatory punishment for an unscheduled gearbox change, in this case before Hamilton’s unit had completed six races, his Mercedes team confirmed. Hamilton’s penalty is the latest unfortunate setback to his mounting championship challenge and follows his bad luck in Baku where, following Vettel’s ‘road rage’ attack, his head-rest worked loose and cost him a near-certain victory. He was given a 10-seconds stop-go penalty during the race, but that was rendered ineffective – in terms of the championship scrap with Hamilton – by the Englishman’s head-rest problems. “It has been a pretty good day at the track, pretty good from the get-go,” he said.

Source: Manila Times July 08, 2017 11:48 UTC