Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were two standout performers at the United States Grand Prix, with Leclerc taking an unlikely pole position on Friday and Hamilton coming close to overhauling Max Verstappen for victory on Sunday.

By Sunday night they were notable for a completely different reason: both were disqualified from the race.

Disqualifications are rare, reserved largely for technical breaches and the most serious sporting breaches relating to the fairness of competition.

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Lewis Hamilton has been stripped of second place at the United States Grand Prix after a post-race technical inspection revealed his Mercedes car was set up to run lower than allowed according to the regulations.

Charles Leclerc has also been disqualified from sixth place after Ferrari was found to have committed the same breach.

A random post-race technical check found both cars suffered excessive wear to their rear titanium skid blocks.

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Lewis Hamilton says he’s been operating beneath his usual competitive standard despite not having the car to take the fight to the leaders.

The Briton beat Max Verstappen to a shock pole by just 0.003s on Saturday to set up a potentially fascinating battle, but a slow start opened the door to a bold move on the brakes by the Dutchman to assume the lead into the first corner.

Verstappen went on to claim a 33s victory, the largest since Hamilton won the 2021 Russian Grand Prix by almost a minute. Hamilton eventually trailed home fourth, 39s off the lead.

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Lewis Hamilton has praised the overnight work of his team to turn the car’s lacklustre Friday pace into a surprise pole-setting performance.

Mercedes ended Friday practice anchored to the bottom of the time sheet, with Hamilton 16th and teammate George Russell last. While the raw times were due to neither driver using the soft tire, Hamilton described the car as being “at its worst” at a track he has historically dominated.

“It’s night and day different today,” he said. “Literally we turned it up on its head. Yesterday the car felt terrible. The balance was all over the place. It was very, very difficult to extract any performance from it.”

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Lewis Hamilton has set a new record for most poles at one racetrack by pinching the fastest time from Max Verstappen in a thrilling qualifying hour at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The fight for pole was delicately poised at the end of the first laps of Q3. Verstappen had strung together a lap for provisional pole, but his advantage was a slender 0.126s ahead of Hamilton.

The Dutchman has been unhappy with the balance of his Red Bull machine all weekend, and that discomfort was evident at several moments throughout qualifying. 

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Lewis Hamilton bested Max Verstappen to top spot of an intriguing final practice session at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Warm weather and a high track evolution following rain on Friday made the hour difficult to read, as did the ongoing effects of Pirelli’s reduced tire allocations for teams, which forced them to be more frugal with their run plans.

It took until the final 15 minutes for Hamilton and Verstappen to get to their soft-tire qualifying simulation laps, having spent the balance of the hour on the slower medium tire.

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Lewis Hamilton says his Mercedes car was “at its worst” on a difficult Friday afternoon at the Hungarian Grand Prix but apportioned some of the blame to Formula 1’s experimental tire rules in operation this weekend.

Hamilton finished the day an uncompetitive 16th and 1.06s off the pace. Teammate George Russell was last and 1.489s adrift.

Pirelli has temporarily reduced the number of sets of dry-weather tires available for each driver from 13 to 11 in a push to improve its environmental footprint and create more strategic jeopardy. Rather than the usual two hards, three mediums and eight softs available, each driver has been allocated three hards, four mediums and four softs.

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Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have topped the mostly dry second practice at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Dark clouds descended on Montreal, but rain held off until the final five minutes of the 90-minute session, allowing teams to complete dry qualifying and race simulations uninterrupted.

The track was declared wet in the final 10 minutes in anticipation of the thunderstorm crawling towards the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, leading to the bizarre scenes of most of the field fitting intermediate tires but lapping a still-dry track.

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After 16 years in Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton is used to contract speculation.

But contract years hit differently for the racing veteran these days. As the most successful driver of all time and comfortably the grid’s highest profile personality, he holds all the cards in any negotiation. His seven titles and unprecedented 103 wins have earnt him that right.

What Hamilton wants Hamilton gets. But what happens when what the Briton wants isn’t possible to obtain?

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After 16 years in Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton is used to contract speculation.

But contract years hit differently for the racing veteran these days. As the most successful driver of all time and comfortably the grid’s highest profile personality, he holds all the cards in any negotiation. His seven titles and unprecedented 103 wins have earnt him that right.

What Hamilton wants Hamilton gets.

But what happens when what the Briton wants isn’t possible to obtain?

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Lewis Hamilton says he will continue to speak his mind during the 2023 Formula 1 season in defiance of an FIA ban on political speech in motorsport.

Late last year the FIA inserted a clause into the International Sporting Code, world motorsport’s fundamental governance document, that bans drivers from making “political, religious and personal statements” without prior written approval.

Punishments for breaking the code range from a simple warning to the suspension of a competition licence and a maximum fine of €250,000 ($387,000).

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Lewis Hamilton led teammate George Russell in a Mercedes one-two in opening practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Both drivers surged on soft tires to take the top two spots with around 15 minutes remaining, with Hamilton 0.22s ahead of Russell.

Charles Leclerc was a close third, 0.035s adrift in his Ferrari, while Sergio Perez was 0.334s off the pace for Red Bull.

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A front-row lockout converted into an easy one-two finish — Mercedes had the São Paulo Grand Prix so firmly in its grasp that it felt like we were back in the mid-2020s, as though this season had never really happened.

The only difference was the scale of the celebrations, and not just in acknowledgment of George Russell’s long-awaited first victory.

It had been more than 11 months since Mercedes last won a race and more than two years since its cars finished first and second.

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Lewis Hamilton has a long and deep history with Brazil. Now it’s been formalised with citizenship.

The Briton has long identified Ayrton Senna as his racing hero and driving force, and it was a dream come true to win his first championship in Sao Paulo in 2008.

In that race he was the villain, defeating home hero Felipe Massa, but his passion was undimmed, and it’s a testament to his affinity for the country that he’s since won over the enthusiastic local crowd to the point that he’s now welcomed back to the circuit as a local favourite.

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Lewis Hamilton says he wants to continue in Formula 1 until at least the end of 2025 as he prepares for contract negotiations to extend his stay at Mercedes.

Hamilton is out of contract at the end of next season, when he’ll be 38 years old. Another two-year deal would take him past his 40th birthday.

But the seven-time champion has showed no signs of slowing down in his 16th season despite the downturn in Mercedes’s competitiveness that’s left him facing the first winless campaign of his career.

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Lewis Hamilton pipped Max Verstappen to the top spot in twilight first practice at the Singapore Grand Prix, with Charles Leclerc in third.

Mercedes driver Hamilton waited until the final five minutes to set his best time on soft tires, his best lap of 1m43.033s topping Verstappen’s Red Bull by just 0.084s.

Track evolution is usually very high around the Singapore street circuit as the track rubbers in and the sun begins to set, which played into the Briton’s hands given his lap came around 15 minutes after Verstappen’s best effort.

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Lewis Hamilton says he’s never experienced as much pain while driving in Formula 1 as he did during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, thanks to his Mercedes car’s aggressive bouncing.

All teams have had to deal with either aerodynamic porpoising or their cars bottoming out along Baku’s 1.4-mile straight, but Mercedes suffered most thank to the W13 already being predisposed to the bouncing.

The team clarified during the weekend that in Baku it wasn’t suffering from the same porpoising that afflicted it before the Spanish Grand Prix; instead the car was scraping along the track on the straights because it needs to be run extremely close to the ground to generate performance.

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Lewis Hamilton has welcomed FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem walking back his comments stating that drivers shouldn’t be using their F1 platform to advocate social and environmental causes.

Ben Sulayem singled out Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Lando Norris for using Formula 1 to “impose [their] beliefs” on the audience in an interview published last week, but in a tweet on Thursday he clarified that he believed the sport could be a force for positive change.

“As a driver, I have always believed in sport as a catalyst of progress in society,” he wrote. “That is why promoting sustainability, diversity and inclusion is a key priority of my mandate. In the same way, I value the commitment of all drivers and champions for a better future.”

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