So I didn't watch the whole Formula 1 2017 Baku Race race but I saw the incident and the following uproar from it. From the video replay below Vettel who drives for Ferrari first drove into the back of Hamilton in the Mercedes car. Vettel then immediately raises his hand basically saying that Hamilton had deliberatly slowed down which had caused the incident.
Source:YouTube F1 Racers
Then Vettel drives up beside Hamilton and swerves into his car damaging them both slightly. For this swerve Vettel received a 10 second stop-and-go penalty as it was deemed to be dangerous driving which it clearly was. They were both moving at slow speeds at the time because of a restart but still you can't be doing this as a professional driver.
Interestingly enough the race data later showed that Hamilton had not applied any brakes or looked like he had slowed down deliberately. So was Vettel trying to get under the nose of Hamilton on purpose? With driving into the back of Hamilton's car it does seem unlikely but you never know, these elite drivers are super competitive! I feel it's more like Vettel just misjudged the pace for a split second and then in a rage took it out on Hamilton with the following swerve incident!
In the end Vettel actually ended up finishing the race in 4th place just a split second in front of Hamilton. Vettel leads the drivers’ championship by 14 points now but he is a 3 point penalty away from a race ban, so he will have to drive cleanly or possibly lose his points advantage.
Anyway it makes it a little more interesting for the rest of the season. Hopefully there won't be any more of that kind of deliberate contact but we may see very aggressive direct driving between these two rivals in future races!
