Helmut Marko claims that Red Bull have hired a lawyer to investigate the handling of the collision between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone. With the two championship rivals colliding at high speed at Copse corner on the first lap of the British Grand Prix, Verstappen ended up in the barriers and required precautionary hospitalisation afterwards. Hamilton was found predominantly to blame for the crash by the stewards and awarded him a ten second penalty. However, Hamilton was able to recover from this and win the race. "He [the lawyer] should check what you could do in such a situation within the framework of the sports law," Marko is quoted by Austria's Kronen Zeitung. The Red Bull motorsport advisor also called for a race ban for Hamilton on Sunday following the crash. Given the serious championship consequences, with Verstappen losing 25 points out of his 33 point lead, as well as potentially losing an engine from his engine pool, Marko said every avenue of redressing the balance needs to be evaluated. "It was very lucky that nothing serious happened to Max, the car, and probably the engine too, is broken. You can't let that sit on you," Marko said. "A suspension would be justified," Marko continued, although admitted that the sporting regulations as they are written might not allow for harsher penalties to be applied during the race. "That's ridiculous. But maybe the regulations are also to blame for being relatively restricted," he said. "The law should be revised, including the stewards system. Perez got five seconds twice in Austria because there was marginal contact without anyone flying off. You could have given a pit-through penalty plus ten seconds at Hamilton. But they didn't do that either. “Max was on his line, where Hamilton was he has to lift off the throttle. You cannot hit your opponent on the rear wheel in one of the fastest corners, the lightest touch has fatal consequences. So an irresponsible action. Hamilton needs to know what the consequences are.” FIA Race Director Michael Masi explained after the race that the decision to award Hamilton a ten second time penalty was a completely standard penalty , with the teams having an agreement with the FIA and Race Control that the content of incidents should not be taken into consideration when evaluating how to penalise a driver.
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