Lewis Hamilton and world championship leader Kimi Antonelli have been given penalties to shuffle the order at the top end of the Hungarian Grand Prix grid.

Ferrari’s Hamilton was first handed a three-place demotion from second place in the hours after qualifying for impeding McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the end of Q3.

That initially dropped the Ferrari driver behind Antonelli, who had originally qualified fourth, before the Mercedes driver was then handed a three-place demotion himself for failing to slow sufficiently for yellow flags when Max Verstappen spun at the last corner.

Hamilton will now start fifth and Antonelli – who leads the Briton by 45 points at the top of the Drivers’ Championship – seventh, behind Mercedes team-mate George Russell.

The Ferrari driver has now received three stewards’ penalties in the last three race weekends. He was previously handed five-second in-race sanctions for a false start at Silverstone and then a first-lap collision with Russell last week in Belgium.

In a post on Instagram on Saturday evening, Hamilton wrote: “Sometimes you just can’t catch a break. Another weekend when I’ve been feeling great throughout all the sessions, but then it just falls apart.

“To go from being so close to pole to then starting P5 is extremely frustrating.

“I always do my best to keep positive – sport is always about the highs and lows, but it’s also in the margins. Every point counts and you have to seize every opportunity.

“After three penalties in three weekends, it’s becoming difficult to hang on to that positivity. Still, I won’t let the setbacks take away from the progress we’ve been making as a team. With the pace we have, I’m hopeful we can get something out of the race tomorrow. The car has been feeling better and better, and we’ve been competitive all weekend.

“Tonight, we’ll keep working hard together to give ourselves the best possible chance tomorrow. I always enjoy this track, so keep the faith and send good vibes for the race.”

McLaren’s Lando Norris claimed pole position after topping qualifying with Hamilton’s penalty promoting team-mate Charles Leclerc onto the front row in second place.

Piastri moves up to third with Red Bull’s Verstappen taking over fourth having originally qualified sixth.

Why Hamilton was given his three-place grid penalty

Hamilton had been the first of the leading drivers to complete his final lap – positioning he was left surprised by – in Q3 and did not improve what at the time stood as the provisional pole lap time.

But he slowed down once he crossed the start-finish line, the Ferrari appeared to block Piastri through Turn One as the McLaren started its own final timed attempt behind him.

Stewards summoned both drivers and team representatives after qualifying to review the incident and ultimately judged that Hamilton had unnecessarily impeded Piastri, handing him a three-place grid demotion.

Speaking before the penalty was confirmed, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said any blame fell on the team and not Hamilton.

Vasseur told Sky Sports F1: “We told him [about Piastri] but it was far too late.

“If there’s a mistake, it’s our mistake.”

Hamilton himself said soon after qualifying: “I was told literally when he was at the apex behind me, so I had no idea he was coming. I thought everyone came out behind me. I was the first out, so I thought everyone had finished the lap.

“I think Charles was coming up behind me when I left the pit lane, as far as I was aware.

“Crazy, because it had been clean, and obviously it wasn’t intentional.”

‘A bit of a shock to me’ – Hamilton questions Ferrari’s final-run strategy before Piastri block

Ferrari would arguably have avoided such a situation with Piastri entirely, however, had they sent Hamilton back out onto the track for his final timed of qualifying later rather than earlier.

The Briton held provisional pole from Norris by one tenth of a second after Q3’s first timed laps. He was dispatched as the first car back onto the circuit for the final runs with just over three minutes of the session remaining.

Norris was the second last driver to take to the track, with Piastri the last. Hamilton did not improve his time on his final lap, whereas Norris did and pipped him to pole by 0.012s.

And Hamilton admitted: “I don’t know why we went first, and that was a bit of a shock to me.

“I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to go first, but it is what it is.

“I had a clean out-lap, and when I started my lap, already into Turn One I had a snap and I was already a tenth and a half down. It just cascaded from there. So, the last lap was the worst lap of all, and all the other laps were really good. We clearly had the car to be on pole today, and I just didn’t deliver. So that’s tough to swallow.”

Hamilton also said that pole position – which would have been his first for a Grand Prix since the same event three years ago – “definitely got away from us”.

Why Antonelli was given his three-place grid penalty

In a separate incident moments later, Antonelli was placed under investigation for failing to slow down sufficiently as he approached the Hungaroring’s final corner with Verstappen’s Red Bull in the run-off area.

Antonelli told Sky Sports F1 afterwards: “The yellow flag came while I was entering the corner so I tried my best to lift. I did lift but gave up quite a bit of minimum speed compared to before. It was a shame.”

However, in their post-race investigation, stewards ruled that while Antonelli did indeed lift off the throttle earlier than his previous lap when passing Verstappen’s car his speed “was slightly higher than that on the previous push lap”.

They concluded that although the Mercedes “did make a reduction in speed” it was “in our determination, an insufficient and unsustained one”. While the more standard penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags is a five-place grid demotion, stewards took into account the “mitigation” of the fact he had slowed to an extent and reduced it to three spots.

Sky Sports F1’s Hungarian GP schedule

Sunday July 26
7.35am: F3 Feature Race
9.05am: Porsche Supercup
10.20am: F2 Feature Race
12.30pm: Hungarian GP build-up: Grand Prix Sunday*
2pm: THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX*
4pm: Hungarian GP reaction: Chequered Flag*
5pm: Ted’s Notebook*

*Also on Sky Sports Main Event

Formula 1 is in Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix with Sunday’s race at 2pm and build-up from 12.30pm, live on Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports Main Event. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime

San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was injured in a car crash earlier in July that will limit his participation at the start of training camp, the team announced Saturday.

The team described the injuries only as “non-life-threatening” and thanked first responders for their work at the scene of the crash last week.

The Niners will conduct their first practice with assistant head coach/offensive line coach Chris Foerster running the team, along with coordinators Klay Kubiak, Raheem Morris and Brant Boyer.

“San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was involved in a car accident last week where he suffered non-life-threatening injuries,” the team said in a statement.

“Coach Shanahan will participate in team activities on a limited basis at the start of training camp while he recovers. Coach Shanahan and the 49ers organisation would like to sincerely thank all first responders involved for their efforts and care.

“Assistant head coach Chris Foerster along with team coordinators will handle head coach responsibilities during this period.”

Shanahan is entering his 10th season as 49ers coach and is one of the most highly regarded coaches in the game for his offensive acumen.

San Francisco has made two trips to the Super Bowl under his watch following the 2019 and 2023 seasons and made two additional appearances in the NFC title game in the 2021 and ’22 seasons.

Shanahan has a 91-72 record in the regular season and playoffs for the 49ers, ranking third in franchise history in wins behind George Seifert (108) and Bill Walsh (102).

The team overcame significant injuries last season to finish 12-5 in the regular season and win a playoff game as Shanahan finished fifth in voting for the AP NFL Coach of the Year.

They open the season September 10 against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia.

George Russell has been forced to change his power unit ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix after a crack on his engine caused a water leak in qualifying.

Russell qualified a disappointing seventh for Sunday’s race, although he will start sixth ahead of team-mate Kimi Antonelli after the championship leader was given a three-grid place penalty for speeding.

Russell came to a halt at the end of Q3 as the team detected a loss of water pressure, which means the Mercedes driver will take on his fourth power unit of 2026 but will not be hit with a grid penalty as the change is to the same specification and does not take him above the season-limit of four engines.

Mercedes believe the water leak happened after Russell ran over the exit kerb at Turn 4 during his final run in Q3, where he did not improve his lap time.

“We lost water pressure and I had a water leak. When I stopped on track, the car was leaking a load of water,” Russell, who is 50 points behind championship leader and team-mate Kimi Antonelli, told Sky Sports F1.

“Fingers crossed it doesn’t affect anything for the race.”

It is the latest unreliability issue for Mercedes which has impacted both Russell and Antonelli in recent races.

Both drivers have lost valuable points due to engine-related retirements this season but Russell was “lost for words” at the previous race in Belgium after a bug in the power unit software led to a lack of straight line speed performance and a race-ending collision with Lewis Hamilton at Spa-Francorchamps.

Mercedes have fixed the bug for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

“The software is the same for all the cars, and it was there in every car, but it affected George more than Kimi,” explained Mercedes technical director Simone Resta on Friday.

“We also need to bear in mind that, when comparing their performance in the last few races, Kimi was on a fresher power unit, which is, of course, always a bit better than quite a used power unit.

“That will change in the next races when we start to have a fresher power unit on George’s side. So, there’s a bit of everything. There’s a bit of software, but there’s also Kimi being out of phase with George’s programme. You sum up everything when you look at the final result.”

Russell: Would have been nice to be higher up

But, even prior to Saturday’s water leak in Hungary, Russell was off the pace compared to team-mate Antonelli – a continuation of their pace gap during the European run of events.

Russell will start one place ahead of Antonelli and will look to make inroads into his 50-point championship deficit but the British driver is unsure how easy it will be to get into the fight for the podium to potentially limit the damage.

“We were probably even further on Friday but we had the strongest race pace, which tends to say it’s not a car problem but a tyre problem,” he said.

“Time will tell in the race if we struck the right balance between the qualifying setup and race setup. We probably know we could make the car faster in qualifying trim at the expense of race performance.

“It’s going to be difficult to overtake. It would have been nice to be higher up.”

Sky Sports F1’s Hungarian GP schedule

Sunday July 26
7.35am: F3 Feature Race
9.05am: Porsche Supercup
10.20am: F2 Feature Race
12.30pm: Hungarian GP build-up: Grand Prix Sunday*
2pm: THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX*
4pm: Hungarian GP reaction: Chequered Flag*
5pm: Ted’s Notebook*

*Also on Sky Sports Main Event

Formula 1 is in Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix with Sunday’s race at 2pm and build-up from 12.30pm, live on Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports Main Event. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime