Nico Rosberg has been given a reprimand following his incident with Sergio Perez in today’s second practice session.
Perez had to swerve to avoid Rosberg when he caught the Mercedes driver towards the end of a flying lap. Rosberg saw Perez was coming and began to move off-line at the same time Perez had already turned in the same direction to avoid the Mercedes.
The stewards rules Rosberg “slowed unnecessarily and recklessly in front of car 11 [Perez] between turns 13 and 14” and handed him a reprimand, his first of the season.
Meanwhile Esteban Gutierrez was cleared of any infringement after the stewards investigated the Sauber driver for holding up Felipe Massa at the same point on the circuit.
“After hearing from the driver and reviewing the video evidence the stewards decided that the incident was not an impeding situation,” they ruled.
2014 Bahrain Grand Prix
Image © Daimler/Hoch Zwei
Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
4th April 2014, 21:08
Surprising. It really looked to me like GUT was trying to block MAS and moved twice to do so.
Didn’t see the other incident.
OOliver
4th April 2014, 21:27
Not that I am one for penalising drivers and unnecessary visits to the stewards, but the Gutierrez incident I would love to understand what the explanation was.
Diego (@ironcito)
4th April 2014, 21:31
I thought that reprimands had been replaced by penalty points. What does a reprimand imply?
OOliver
4th April 2014, 21:46
Go and sin no more.
Dennis the menace (@)
5th April 2014, 6:04
Ha, great explanation @OOliver
Sam (@)
5th April 2014, 8:14
So now we got:
Penalties after a race and during a race but also for in a race given before the race.
Reprimands, of which you can ge three and get a 10 place grid penalty.
Penalty points, of which you can get 12 and get a race ban.
To much, stick with the points and delete the reprimands…
Ricardo Ferreira (@yes-master)
5th April 2014, 12:15
Oh, don’t say that. Reprimands are good and useful…for situations when you don’t want to penalized a pilot. If they only had penalties points or grid penalties, what would have happen to Nico?
Not been ironic now. I think that reprimands can be useful as there are lighter situations that don’t demand harsh penalties (like points or grid penalties). The interest is that the penalty has to be proportional to the fact. So, in that perspective, reprimands can be useful.