Pit lane start for eighth-placed Sainz after penalty

2015 Monaco Grand Prix

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Carlos Sainz Jnr will start the Monaco Grand Prix from the pits after being penalised by the stewards.

The Toro Rosso driver, who originally qualified eighth, failed to stop at the FIA weigh bridge when he was indicated to do so during qualifying.

“The driver failed to stop for weighing during Q1 when signalled to do so by the red traffic light, the car was not returned to the FIA garage and work was undertaken,” noted the stewards.

Article 26.1 (iv) of the Sporting Regulations, which Sainz was found to have violated, states: “A reprimand will be imposed on any driver who fails to stop when signalled to do so, provided the car is then brought back to the FIA garage without delay and that the FIA technical delegate is satisfied the car has been brought back in exactly the same condition it was in when it was driven into the pits.”

“Any driver who fails to stop when asked to do so, and then fails to bring the car back to the FIA garage, or if work is carried out on the car before it is returned to the FIA garage, will be required to start the race from the pit lane.”

Pastor Maldonado will move up to eighth place on the grid ahead of Sainz’s team mate Max Verstappen and Jenson Button’s Mclaren.

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    33 comments on “Pit lane start for eighth-placed Sainz after penalty”

    1. Ouch. No worse track to take a pit lane penalty. That will be a lesson Sainz won’t forget.

      Good news for Jenson, after bad luck with the yellow in sector one and missing Q3, he gets promoted to the top ten with penalties to Grosjean and now Sainz.

    2. I would say that this is harsh, but if they ignored the reprimand then there is no argument really. Shame as I was looking forward to watching the Toro Rosso’s tomorrow

      1. @dryyoshi It isn’t the case that they “ignored” the reprimand – they missed the opportunity to return Sainz’s car to the weighbridge right away. Had they done that they would have just got a reprimand instead of this more severe penalty.

        1. @keithcollantine it does seem like a breakdown by the team as well. Are the teams informed when one of their cars are told to stop? (and if the driver misses the weigh-in?).

          1. I believe that the pit wall would normally be informed by race control if they want their driver to call in to the weigh bridge.

    3. what happened to the reprimand that they used to get for doing this, that is brutally harsh and ridiculous, a fully undeserved penalty

      1. Indeed this is brutally harsh and ridiculous, but it is fully deserved. Rules are rules im afraid :((

      2. Trenthamfolk (@)
        23rd May 2015, 15:57

        If you get away with it, what’s to stop teams cheating by running an illegal car, ignoring the weigh bridge, then taking a slap on the wrist? Totally deserved, he may have been running an illegal car but we’ll never know since it had been ‘worked on’… the rule is there for a reason.

      3. They issue the reprimand if the driver sees the light late and gets pushed back to the weigh bridge without doing a lap. Sainz kept going and did a full lap, the rule book is clear that in those circumstances the penalty is a pit lane start.

      4. It is explained on the article.

      5. @bezza695

        what happened to the reprimand that they used to get for doing this

        It says in the article.

      6. Martin Brundle done it 1989 and was actually disqualified from the event, sent home early. Starting from pit lane is not even a slap on the wrist by comparison. I was hoping Sainz would have s good race too.

    4. Really silly mistake from Toro Rosso, and a real shame to see Sainz start from the back. I find it really odd that they would just ignore it unless they were tampering with something on the car

      1. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that the team ignored the request. I would suspect the more likely situation is that they just completely missed the call to go to the weigh bridge and would have just instinctively begun working on the car again to get it ready for the next qualifying session.

    5. Doesn’t this happen more often at Monaco than elsewhere? Are the lights harder to see there or something? [I’m just going off my dodgy memory, not any facts or research…]

      1. Actually Sainz said exactly the same thing! They should move them… Though considering they have trees growing into the garages, they are cramped a bit.

    6. Sainz did a great job today, beating his much praised teammate again in qualifying. Shame he gets penalized. This really ruins his race.

      As a dutch guy I love Verstappen but getting beat almost every qualifying session by your teammate is really a bad look for him imho and makes Sainz look great. If I’m Horner I’d look long and hard at Sainz to replace Kvyat next year.

      1. wow. One’s 17, one’s 20 and both are all of 6 races into F1 and one of them should move up to the senior team? Not to mention both are pretty equal on points.

        One thing that folks seem to forget, is that Ricciardo is 25 and had a year with HRT and 2 years with Toro Rosso before moving up to Red Bull. He’s now in his 5th year, where as Kyvatt is in his 2nd year and is 20/21 and driving a car that barely gets out for any real running either in FP or Qualy. And here in Monaco, it’s not like RIC put a spanking on him (a tenth separates them).

        1. I’m not saying that either should be promoted yet. But if they are (amd there were some articles that expressed critique at Kvyat lately) thén they might wanna take Sainz over Verstappen based on what we have seen so far in my opinion.

          I actually think (and said at the time) they should have taken Vergne, have Kvyat alongside a rookie and let Verstappen race i FR3.5 for a year or two first.

          But that’s not what happened though and you’re right, it’s still early in the season.

      2. maarten.f1 (@)
        23rd May 2015, 22:18

        I am sure the team looks at more than just the qualifying results. There are so many factors that determine whether a driver is any good or not. Verstappen is doing pretty good, but Sainz is definitely no slough either. Both are showing pretty exciting things so far, time will tell whether they have a future in F1. I hope they both do.

        1. Toro Rosso is doing really good which flatter both compared towhat Vergne, Kvyat and Ricciardo had to work with the last few years.

          Look at Nasr and Ericsson the first few races they looked great amd now are not really talked about because Sauber is falling back and from Ericsson we saw nothing at caterham.

          The only thing you can really ‘trust’ as a indication is the teammate comparison and in the case of Toro Rosso Sainz outqualified Verstappen all but once I believe, out raced him Spain and currently is ahead in reace results as well, though both had retirements. Overall I’m just more impressed with Sainz so far. He has more experience but hey, Verstappen chose to go into F1 so early and F1 is not a junior Formula. Both are rookies in the same boot (litterally car) and one of them has done a better job imho

    7. What a shame! He did amazing job and then blew it with silly mistake…

    8. If I am not wrong, wasn’t he signalled to stop in the middle of Q1? If it’s true then it’s a ridiculous rule in itself.

      1. @neelv27 Its not a ridiculous rule, Its there as a deterrent as before this rule was in place it wasn’t uncommon for teams to run underweight during a session & then add ballast later on so that the car was legal when weighed. If the risk of been called into the weight bridge is there then teams are not going to risk it.

        They added the rule about random calls to the weighbridge in the mid 80s & its been in place ever since. As Martin Brundle said in commentary in 1991 at Monaco he was excluded from the rest of the event after qualifying for missing the weighbridge.

        1. Surely it makes sense but this could be done when the car is coming in after the end of Q1 and not in the middle of the session which hinders everything.

      2. It’s ridiculous the way the rule is working. They should notify the team through radio message not the driver through traffic lights.

    9. Apex Assassin
      23rd May 2015, 21:04

      So Jos Verstappen is a steward this weekend, right? I mean seriously. What a nonsense penalty in an age when a warning not only suffices but is the standard response for missing the weighbridge. I call shenanigans!

      1. As per the comments above, things like this need to be enforced at all times otherwise we have a dangerous precedent.

        Such a shame for Sainz, but a lesson he won’t forget.

      2. maarten.f1 (@)
        23rd May 2015, 22:21

        Stewards are bound by the rules, and the rules are clear. Miss the call and go on with your session means exclusion from qualifying. Sainz’ mistake was to miss the initial call, and the team’s mistake was not to send him back there immediately (if they had done that, he would’ve only gotten a reprimand instead).

    10. The pit lane could be the safest place of all to start the Monaco Grand Prix…

    11. I was thinking that it would be fairer to simply delete all his times prior to them missing the weighbridge, and then make a point of weighing them at the end of the session (under penalty of exclusion).
      But then I thought: that won’t work. Because the weightbridge-calls are random, teams would risk it and run light, and then come in halfway through a session having done fantastic times. If they were unlucky enough to get called to the weighbridge, they would fail to turn up (“whoops, sorry”), get their times cancelled, and then go out for the rest of the session at proper weight, still set a time and still qualify somewhere. Meanwhile all the teams who haven’t had to go to the weighbridge would have kept their times while at 620kg or something daft.
      And this thinking applies if they’d only given Sainz a 5 or 10 place grid penalty. So no, they can’t do anything more lenient than effectively remove all his qualifying efforts. These are professional teams, they’re informed that they need to get weighed and there’s no competent reason for missing it (other than cheating). And if it’s incompetence, then Torro Rosso should be thankful that they’re still being allowed to run 2 cars around Monaco today.

      1. The FIA has a primitive process for these weigh-ins especially now the drivers have so many proceedures they are engaged in when coming into the pit. I don’t think the teams are told in advance when they will be stopped. And with perhaps the shortest pitlane in Monaco, he would be in the garage and tyre warmers on before the stewards can notify the team.

    12. I must say that it is an unfair punishment. Pit rules should be changed

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