Late on Sunday, in Sochi, the stewards removed the two penalty points on Hamilton's card.
They met with the pilot and team representatives and admitted that if Lewis had been told from the wall where to test-out, it was his engineers who committed the infraction.
For this, Mercedes received a fine of 25,000 euros but Hamilton was not punished on his points account.
The detail is not irrelevant: the Briton has eight and if he receives 12 in the same year, he would be penalized with a race without competing.
An innocent penalty like that of the Russian GP would have caused a great scare.
Still, the champion's anger does not go away.
He thinks that the stewards are hurting him to fuel competition in Formula 1 and he fears that they will seek "new sanctions, or penalties that have never been applied until now", to damage his enormous advantage in qualifying and in most races.
"We will go to the rules, see where rules can be created or what penalties have never been applied before, to be prepared. We will
work hard. I have to make sure I don't give them the slightest reason (to be penalized)," says Lewis, leader with 44 points of advantage over Bottas.
He is considering talking to Michael Masi, the FIA race director.
And that the Australian, successor to Charlie Whiting, tends to downplay this kind of punishment.
Masi is a technician, sees the competition with the eyes of a steward and takes simple approaches.
For example, remember that
"the only reason to designate an area in which to rehearse the exits (Hamilton did it outside the authorized lane) is to ensure the safety of all drivers."
Within a circuit, all caution is little when competing at the highest level.
"I suppose that perhaps there was a lack of communication between the team and the driver of the car '44', because Valtteri and the rest of the drivers rehearsed the starts in the authorized zone," says Masi. And about why he was punished in the race after an action that did not happen in full test:
"You must take everything into account, for the stewards to rehearse that start in another area was a sporting advantage. They thought that the appropriate penalty should be sporting."
In any case: "They are reasons of the commissioners and not mine."
"It was against Article 36.1 of the sports rules, which oblige us to maintain a constant speed when leaving the pit lane, and also against notifications from the Race Direction," says the race director.
That, moreover, he has no objection to receiving Lewis: "From my perspective it is very simple, my doors are always open and I am more than happy to discuss anything.
The FIA administers the rules, but the stewards are independent. If there is a punishment, it doesn't matter if it was Lewis Hamilton or any other of the 19 drivers.
Besides, I would say that they judge by taking into account all the elements. "
