Speaking after the sprint race, Norris agreed with Alonso that it was “obvious” who was responsible for the crash. “Lewis dived up the inside and caused the incident,” Norris told the official F1 channel. “Nothing I could do about that.”
The stewards, explaining their decision to take no further action, noted that the first collision actually took place between Alonso and Stroll, rather than Alonso and Hamilton. But they added that the “fast arrival” of Hamilton had certainly contributed to the pileup.
“However,” they continued, “we were not able to identify one or more drivers wholly or predominantly to blame for the various collisions or any one of them. Also keeping in mind that this was in Turn 1 of Lap 1 where greater latitude is given to drivers for incidents, we took no further action.”
Hamilton’s mood would not have been helped by how his Sprint race ultimately panned out.
Although the 39 year-old survived the first-corner contact, he spent most of the ensuing 19 laps stuck behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen.
The Dane picked up no fewer than three penalties in a desperate bid to hold off Hamilton, all of them “well deserved” by Magnussen’s own admission, so as to allow his teammate Nico Hulkenberg to escape up the road.
And when Hamilton did finally manage to pass the Haas, and Yuki Tsunoda’s Alpine, to finish eighth, and pick up a solitary point, the Briton’s misery continued as he was hit with a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane. Given he could not serve it as the race was over, that converted into a 20-second post-race time penalty, dropping Hamilton to P16. Ironically one place ahead of Alonso.
