FIA make final decision on Lewis Hamilton penalty after Dutch GP incident

The FIA have made a final decision over Lewis Hamilton's pre-race infringement ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver was summoned to the stewards after allegedly failing to slow for yellow flags during his reconnaissance lap on the way to the grid.

It was announced that the infringement would be investigated after the Grand Prix, leaving Hamilton with a nervy wait to see whether his race result would be affected.

As it happened, the seven-time champion crashed out of the race at Zandvoort on lap 23 after hitting the wall out of turn three.

His team-mate Charles Leclerc was later forced to retire after being hit by Kimi Antonelli, to cap off what was a miserable day for Ferrari.

The FIA have now announced that Hamilton has received a five-place grid penalty for his pre-race infringement.

In an even worse development, the Brit will serve the penalty at Ferrari's home race, the Italian Grand Prix, next weekend at Monza.

FIA explain Lewis Hamilton penalty decision

In a statement explaining their penalty verdict, the FIA said: "The regulations require that any driver passing through a double waved yellow flag marshalling sector 'reduce speed significantly'.

"The data showed that the driver had entered the double yellow sector approximately 20kph less than his speed at the same point in practice sessions, had reduced throttle application in the order of 10% and 20% and had lifted and braked 70 metres earlier when entering the pit lane.

"We did not consider that a 20kph reduction in speed at a double waved yellow sector constituted reducing speed 'significantly'. We also did not consider the speed at which the driver entered the pit entry road as being at a 'greatly' reduced speed.

"The penalty guidelines for such an infringement would ordinarily attract a penalty of 10 grid positions at the next race.

"However, given that the driver had made an attempt to reduce his speed and to break earlier, we took that into account as mitigating circumstances and imposed a 5 grid place penalty."

Where there any other penalties?

The FIA confirmed that four other drivers - Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris - had all exceeded the 1:26.0 time limit between safety car lines on their reconnaissance laps.

However, all four escaped any punishment after the FIA deemed that they did not drive 'unnecessarily slowly' and 'slowed down significantly to allow other drivers to pass while giving those drivers a clear track'.

Antonelli, however, was given a 10-second penalty for colliding with Leclerc and a further five seconds for pit lane speeding.

The penalties were added on to the Italian's final race time and dropped him out of the points at Zandvoort.

No further action was taken, meanwhile, against Leclerc and George Russell after they were noted over causing a collision.