Jolyon Palmer column: Five lessons from the Russian GP

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer, who left Renault during the 2017 season, is part of the BBC team and offers insight and analysis from the point of view of the competitors.

The Russian Grand Prix will not go down as a classic.

Lewis Hamilton’s penalties killed off what could have been an intriguing battle for the race win, and there was precious little action down the field.

But a boring race on a bland track has nevertheless brought to the fore a number of key themes emerging in Formula 1 as the season heads towards its final phase.

Hamilton simply punished for breaking rules – again

Hamilton feels like public enemy number one with governing body the FIA right now, after receiving a penalty that cost him a probable race win for the second time in three races.

With his lead at the top of the championship seemingly unassailable even at this early stage, Hamilton came out after the race with the bold claim that the race stewards were “trying to stop me”.

The reality is that Hamilton and Mercedes have simply broken the rules both times.

In Monza, Mercedes and Hamilton pitted when the pit lane was closed and received a penalty for it – the same one as Antonio Giovinazzi’s Alfa Romeo was given for the same infringement.

None of Hamilton’s immediate rivals made the same mistake in Monza and nobody else in the field broke the rules by doing a practice start at the exit of the pit lane in Sochi.

The regulations stated that drivers must do practice starts on the right after the pit-lane exit lights. Mercedes argued that there was no designated spot – in terms of anything delineated by markings – but they know the rules define a specific place, and everyone else managed to use it.

I do sympathise with Hamilton, because it is not necessarily his fault in both of these instances.

His Mercedes team let him down by telling him to pit in Monza, and when Hamilton asked on the team radio whether he could do a practice start from further down the pit lane in Russia, his race engineer Pete Bonnington gave Hamilton the green light to do it. The problem was, Hamilton went a lot further down the pit lane than the team had expected.

It’s harsh for him to lose two races in this manner, and the fact that he picked up penalties for both infringements (doing a practice start in the wrong place on consecutive laps) will only grate that bit more, and perhaps seem over the top.

The fact is, though, that Hamilton wanted to do a practice start there, rather than in the designated practice start box, because it was less grippy than the practice area, and therefore more like the grid slot he would be starting on in the race. It would give him a better feel for the start.

If this was allowed, everyone would do it. The practice-start box has more rubber down because that is the place drivers can practise their starts. So every other driver who complies with the regulations does their starts there and little by little rubber from their rear tyres is deposited on to the asphalt.

Sure, it’s not always ideal for race-start preparation, but they are the rules and Hamilton was the only one to do something different. He did it twice, and he was penalised accordingly.

In summary, I don’t think the FIA stewards are against Hamilton, they are simply applying penalties for breaches of the rules.

Sometimes they seem harsh, but I’m sure Haas were arguing the same in Hungary when both drivers were given the same penalty as Hamilton for being told to pit on the formation lap.

All these instances are procedural infringements which leave little wriggle room in terms of application of the rules. In that sense, they are unlike racing incidents, which can be argued against as they aren’t always black and white.