Hamilton misses the chicane and passes Raikkonen. He slows down to let him back through, then overtakes him into the next corner. Due to his shortcut he didn’t have to slow down as much as Raikkonen, and therefore gained an unfair advantage. I wonder, though, what a fair advantage is? Aren’t all advantages unfair? Isn’t that the point of them? Anyway, as far as I can see there are no rules governing what happens after you’ve let a driver back through who you’d unfairly passed. It doesn’t say how long you have to wait before attempting to overtake them again. The team told Lewis to let Kimi past, and then would’ve told him ‘ok, now you can overtake him’. He relied on them for the information.

The stewards, however, must have taken all this information into account, and more information than is available to us. But there’s an extra point. Waiting to make a decision until after the race gives the stewards the advantage of being able to look at the big picture. What was it? Surely it was this: Hamilton was quicker in the wet and would’ve overtaken Kimi eventually, who anyway crashed within a lap. Should the stewards take this information into account, or focus (as they surely did) on the few seconds of the incident alone?