Lewis Hamilton has pledged to become squeaky clean for the rest of the season in a bid to stop Formula 1’s rulemakers penalising him and derailing his hopes for a seventh world title.
Hamilton was denied a shot at victory at yesterday’s Russian Grand Prix after a 10-second penalty for practising his starts in the wrong place.
The Briton, who said he was being unfairly victimised by the race stewards, said: “I’ll just make sure I’m squeaky clean moving forwards — don’t give them an excuse for anything.
“I guess we’ll go through the rule book and pick out areas where they can create rules, areas where penalties have never been given before, and we’ll try to figure out all the ones that they have and try to make sure that we cover ourselves in the ones that we are aware of.
“I just have to make sure I give them no reason, not even a sniff, to be able to do something. It’s not like I haven’t faced adversity before, so we just keep our heads down and keep fighting and keep trying to do a better job and be cleaner and squeaky clean.”
Hamilton was originally given two penalty points for the incident, which left him two points shy of a one-race ban, but that punishment was later rescinded.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said of the time penalty: “I’m not happy with the penalty because it is far-fetched but we agree to disagree. I will always respect the stewards in their job but, on that one, we just agree to disagree.”
