Lewis Hamilton has thrown his hands up and accepted fault for the clash with Oscar Piastri during the Italian Grand Prix. Hamilton was overtaking the McLaren driver for eighth place on Lap 41 of the race, but made contact with the left front of Piastri’s car at the second chicane after squeezing the Australian. While Hamilton emerged from the incident unscathed, Piastri suffered front wing damage and was forced to return to the pits to change the component dropping him out of the points. Hamilton progressed to sixth place but was issued a five-second time penalty for the clash - however, he had enough of a buffer over his competition to hold onto the position with Alex Albon 2.5s behind once the penalty was applied. Speaking to media including RacingNews365.com , Hamilton confirmed that he sought out Piastri after the race to apologise. "It was obviously my fault," Hamilton said. "It wasn’t intentional. I got up alongside and just misjudged the gap that I had to the right and clipped him. "It could happen at any time. But I knew shortly afterwards that it must have been my fault, so I wanted to make sure he knew it wasn’t intentional. That’s what gentlemen do."
Hamilton's strategy concerns
Hamilton was one of only three drivers to start the race on the Hard compound, while the remainder of the field opted for the Medium. The seven-time World Champion was called into the pits several laps before he was originally scheduled, which led to him voicing concern over his strategy on the team radio. "No, I definitely was upset," he said. "I was supposed to go to lap 35. The didn’t pace feel that great at that point. "But the lap that I pitted, they [Mercedes] said that I was going to [our lap] target. And then all of a sudden they were boxing me so I was a little bit confused with that. "I was definitely concerned that I wasn’t going to make it to the end. "The gap was large between myself and the McLarens. I dropped back behind an Aston, I took care of the tyres, closed the gap and had a good battle."
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