LEWIS HAMILTON’S 40th career victory in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix and, with it, a 53-point advantage in the drivers’ world championship was confirmed late Sunday after a two-hour stewards’ inquiry.

    The defending two-time world champion had faced possible disqualification following a technical report that claimed his Mercedes team had raced on tires that were set at a pressure that was too low and infringed the technical regulations.

    But in a statement issued nearly three hours after the race, the stewards said that they had determined the pressure in the tires concerned were at the minimum start pressure recommended by Pirelli — when they were fitted to the car.

    This and the team’s adherence to safety procedures was sufficient evidence of Mercedes’ good intent to sway the decision in their favor.

    “I don’t know what to say about it, it’s not my job,” said Hamilton, when faced with the claims. “Today I’ve been so happy with how the car has been in the race.”

    It was claimed in a report by the sport’s technical delegate Jo Bauer that the left rear tires on the Mercedes cars of both Briton Hamilton and his Mercedes team-mate German Nico Rosberg were ‘below the specified minimum tire starting pressure’ when checked on the grid before the race.

    This, said members of rival teams, was enough to represent a clear breach of the sport’s strict technical regulations and should have resulted in automatic exclusion.

    But after more than two hours of deliberations, during which the stewards talked to the technical delegate and representatives of both Mercedes and Pirelli, they took into consideration that Mercedes’ tire warming blankets had been disconnected from their power source and that their tires were “significantly below” the maximum permitted tire blanket temperature when measured on the grid.(SD-Agencies)