Although Hamilton said he saw the red light, he didn’t stop in time, and went straight into the back of Raikkonen.

Afterwards a fuming Ferrari team member said: “It was just like father like son,” referring to Hamilton’s father Anthony’s crash in a Porsche Carrera GT last week.

Trackside’s Keith Collantine reports on an embarrassing mistake for the British F1 star.

The talk of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend was how the track was falling apart, and how dangerous it was. But Lewis Hamilton brushed all that aside by taking a commanding pole position and streaking away at the start of the race.

If only he’d shown such mastery of the conditions in the pit lane.

On lap 18 most of the leaders had gone into the pits together as the safety car had come out on track. At that moment BMW’s Robert Kubica and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen had quicker pit stops than Hamilton and got out ahead of him.

But the pit lane exit was closed because there were other cars passing by on the track, and Kubica and Raikkonen pulled up by the red light. Although Hamilton said he saw the red light, he didn’t stop in time, and went straight into the back of Raikkonen.

Adding to the comedy of errors Williams’s Nico Rosberg then crashed into Hamilton, meaning the McLaren and Ferrari drivers were both out of the race.

It’s not the first time the pit lights at Montreal have caught drivers out. Last year Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella were disqualified for driving past the red light. So was Juan Pablo Montoya in 2005.

While Hamilton rued the mistake that cost him a repeat victory at the track where he scored his maiden win last year, his old karting rival Kubica made history with his first ever win.

It was also the first triumph for a Polish driver, and the first victory for BMW as a Formula 1 constructor.

And it propels Kubica into the lead of the drivers’ championship ahead of Hamilton and Felipe Massa.

Both Hamilton and Rosberg will have ten-place grid penalties in the next round at France in two weeks’ time because of the crash.