19/10/2007
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton has been financially penalised for using two sets of wet tyres during this morning's free practice session, as opposed to a grid penalty.
The English driver will pay 15,000 euro (£10,400) and surrender the partly used wets in order that they cannot be used again.
Takuma Sato and Jenson Button, who also used tow sets of wet tyres, have received similar penalties.
The FIA announced the fines in an official statement, adding that the Race Stewards were satisfied that neither the teams or drivers involved gained any benefit from the error.
"To avoid the possibility that any of the three teams or their drivers could derive any benefit during the remainder of the event from having available to them part-worn wet tyres... each team will forthwith voluntarily surrender those tyres to the FIA technical assistant," read the statement.
"It's an easy mistake to make," said Hamilton earlier, "a couple of other teams have done it. We haven't gained anything by it, we didn't do it intentionally and there was no benefit.
"We did a very, very slow out lap on wet tyres, we put another set of extreme wets on, we came in and went out again on another set," he added.
The team took full responsibility for the error, team boss Ron Dennis saying: "A hundred percent team mistake. Lewis did an installation lap on one set of wet tyres and we just put on another set. It was one hundred percent our fault, nothing to do with Lewis. He only did an in and an out lap. It wasn't as if there was any advantage but it clearly was a breach of a rule, as two other people made the same mistake."
To check out our Interlagos practice gallery, click here