F1 champion ally hints double standards over Hamilton and Verstappen crash

The chief mechanic of an F1 champion has suggested double standards in the stewarding of two recent collisions.

One of the concerned incidents is Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's crash at the Hungarian Grand Prix, when the Dutchman dived down the inside of the Mercedes driver before locking up and bouncing over the Brit's front right tyre.

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The Austrian Grand Prix was the venue of another high-profile incident involving Verstappen, as he and Lando Norris came together late on to gift George Russell his second career victory.

However, it is the collision between Fernando Alonso and Zhou Guanyu in Spielberg which has drawn comparisons with the Hungary headline-grabber.

Should Verstappen have been punished for his collision with Hamilton?

Verstappen and Hamilton were fighting for third when the 2021 title protagonists made contact, demoting the Red Bull champion to fifth whilst Hamilton carried on unscathed.

Verstappen blamed Hamilton but was adjudged to be at fault on commentary and by many fans, though Hamilton labelled it a racing incident and the stewards took no further action, determining that 'no driver was predominantly to blame'.

The verdict was surprising to those who felt Verstappen was out of control going into Turn 1.

In Austria, Alonso was hit with a ten-second time penalty for crashing into the back of Zhou's car at Turn 3, and the 42-year-old's chief mechanic Mikey Brown took to social media to compare the two incidents.

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"[I'll] leave this here!!!" he wrote on his Instagram story, alongside an image of Alonso hitting Zhou and the Verstappen-Hamilton incident.

The picture of the Alonso-Zhou incident was accompanied with text about Alonso nearing a race ban having accumulated two penalty points for the incident, increasing his tally to eight overall. An automatic race ban is given if a driver reaches 12 in a 12-month period.

The caption of the latter crash quotes the stewards' verdict, which determined that "the driver of Car 44 could have done more to avoid the collision."

Brown appears to insinuate that the same logic was not applied to Zhou, and that the Chinese driver could have avoided the onrushing Alonso like the stewards suggested Hamilton could have regarding Verstappen.

Both Zhou and Hamilton were turning into the corner when they were hit by their rivals, who were both arriving into the turn at an excessive speed.

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