There is an Italian saying: "fare il furbo", literally "to play the smarty" that is, to act in that grey area at the edges of legality. Michael Schumacher, someone Lewis Hamilton has taken a habit of comparing himself to, was very often "furbo" and got nailed for it most of the time.Now on to this business at Spa.
Did Hamilton give back the position? Yes.
Did Hamilton give the position with British "fair play"? Of course not.
What's troubling is that the Mclaren driver seems to have decided he could judge for himself what was "fair" or not.
After cutting the chicane, Hamilton said "I was accelerating so that I didn't lose too much ground because I thought that would be unfair".
What would have been fair would have been a gravel trap on the outside of the bus stop chicane.
For some reason Hamilton seems convinced Raikkonen, who beat him to the apex at the entrance of the chicane, should have rolled over and let him by on the outside. Maybe he's still upset by Massa passing him on the outside in Hungary, maybe he conveniently forgot how he pushed Massa off the track in Germany while complaining that Raikkonen "pushed me off the track".Was the penalty given correct?
Instinctively I would say no. Perhaps fairer would have been a time or grid penalty for the next GP. After all Raikkonen ended up crashing out which he might or might not have if this incident had not occurred.
But here comes the irony. Apparently after Bruno Senna was given a drive though during the GP2 race for a pit lane incident similar to the Massa-Sutil one, there was a lot of protest by British journalist about a fair application of the rules. According to reports on SkySport there was a stewards communique to the teams about how incidents would be scrutinized closely and infractions punished with a drive though. This was directed at pit lane incidents but it's not a stretch to imagine there was a climate of increased vigilance and the stewards hands were, in a way, tied.