Srdjan Suki/EPA

The Chinese Grand Prix was yet another comfortable victory for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, but the bizarre finish left Hamilton wondering if he was “seeing things.” Hamilton sped away for his third consecutive win ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, but the scheduled 56-lap race in Shanghai came to an early end after the marshal at the finish line waved the checkered flag one lap too early.

Hamilton said after the race that he slowed down after seeing the flag, but his confused team told him to keep driving.

Via the Guardian:

“I thought I was starting my last lap and I glanced up and saw something waving and realised it was the chequered flag. I lifted [the power] and lost about a second and a half but the team said ‘No, no. Keep going.’ If the radio had failed or something and I had slowed down and Nico [Rosberg] came past, that would really have sucked. Thank God, it didn’t. It was very, very strange.”

A Formula 1 rule stipulates that if the checkered flag is shown before the end of the race, the results are finalized according to the order of cars that completed the previous lap — so the results were taken after 54 of 56 laps.

Zhao Wang/AFP

The front of the field was so spread out that ending the race a lap early had no real effect on the order of the finish — Hamilton won by 18 seconds. Kamui Kobayashi was moved back from 17th to 18th after completing a last-lap pass of Jules Bianchi, but no points are given to drivers outside the top 10.

Zhao Wang/AFP