Lewis Hamilton’s claim that he and his Mercedes team are being unfairly targeted to make Formula One more competitive has been strongly denied by the FIA. Hamilton was given two five-second penalties at Sochi for taking a practice start outside the designated area in the pit lane exit on his way to the grid. “From an FIA perspective we are there as a sporting regulator to administer the regulations,” he said. “We have the stewards as an independent judiciary to adjudicate those, and therefore there was an infringement and it doesn’t matter if it was Lewis Hamilton or any one of the other 19 drivers. Mercedes did not appeal against the penalties but argued that there was ambiguity in the rules that did not specify where a driver could practise starts. “We hadn’t realised quite how far he was going to go,” he said.

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