Lewis Hamilton has praised Kevin Magnussen’s brutal honesty after the pair came to blows in the F1 Miami Grand Prix sprint race.

Hamilton and Magnussen engaged in a near-race long duel for the final point on offer in eighth and clashed on multiple occasions.

Haas driver Magnussen was hit with three different 10-second penalties for leaving the track and gaining an advantage during the battle, as well as a fourth penalty of five seconds for exceeding track limits several times.

Having collected a total of 35-seconds worth of penalties, Magnussen dropped from 10th down to 18th and last.

After the sprint race, Magnussen admitted all of his penalties were “deserved”.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton said he respected Magnussen’s honesty.

“I think that’s really honest of him and I think that’s pretty cool,” said Hamilton, who finished eighth on the road but slipped to 16th in the final classification after being hit with a 20-second time penalty for pit lane speeding.

“We had a good race. It was a little bit on the edge in some places but that’s what I love. I love racing hard!

“For me, I wasn’t really frustrated or anything. But yeah, that’s what you do to work as a team, so bravo.”

Magnussen blamed the penalties on “stupid tactics” he had to use to help Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg claim valuable points in seventh.

“All the penalties were well deserved – no doubt about it,” the Dane conceded. “But I had to play the game again.

“I was in a very good position behind there. In the beginning of the race I gained a lot of positions and was up in P8.

“I was protecting well from Lewis because I had the DRS from Nico and I had good pace.

“But then Nico cut the chicane, and I lost the DRS and Nico could have given that back to give me the DRS to protect, because then we would have easily been P7 and P8. Instead I was really vulnerable to Lewis, started fighting with him like crazy.

“I had to just create the gap like I did in Jeddah and start using these stupid tactics, which I don’t like doing.

“But at the end of the day I did my job as a team player and Nico scored his points because I got that gap for him, so Lewis and Tsunoda couldn’t catch him. So not the way I like to go racing at all, but what I had to do today.”