Kvyat reaches ten penalty points and gets grid drop

2017 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Daniil Kvyat has been given a three-place grid drop for the Hungarian Grand Prix for holding up Lance Stroll during qualifying.

The Toro Rosso driver was also given another penalty point on his licence, making him the first driver to reach a total of ten.

Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying in pictures
Any driver who reaches 12 points receives an automatic one-race ban. Kvyat will have ten points on his licence until at least the Unites States Grand Prix in October.

According to the stewards Kvyat was driving more slowly than usual due to tyre damage, but they ruled this did not excuse him from holding Stroll up.

“The stewards determined that Kvyat was on an exceptionally slow lap having spun earlier and damaged his tyres,” they said in a statement.

“The stewards acknowledged that he was warned by the team very late of the approach of Stroll who was on a fast lap. Further, Kyvat pulled as far to the right as he could as soon as he saw Stroll.”

“However, the stewards considered that these were not mitigating factors. Kyvat was driving exceptionally slowly and taking the racing line at the end of Q1 when other drivers were attempting to set fast laps and this led to the unnecessary impeding.”

Kvyat’s grid penalty means he will start the race from 16th on the grid instead of 13th.

“There was a bit of a miscommunication,” he said, “so I didn’t know that anyone was coming behind and we’ve now got a penalty for blocking another car.”

His total of ten penalty points were collected in six separate incidents over the past 12 months. Kvyat caused a collision during last year’s United States Grand Prix, picking up two points, and took another penalty point for overtaking Romain Grosjean off the track in Mexico.

He was given two penalty points on his licence on three occasions this year for further incidents. In Canada he was not in the correct starting position at the end of the formation lap and in Austria and Britain he caused first-lap crashes.

2017 Hungarian Grand Prix

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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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    36 comments on “Kvyat reaches ten penalty points and gets grid drop”

    1. So, Stroll got holded up, and the result of this is Kyvat will start right ahead of him instead of a few spots ahead.
      Seems no penalty might have been more fair… for Stroll, actually.

    2. Looking like a possible opportunity for Robert K. to fill-in (in a Renault powered car) when Kyvat picks up a couple more points on Sunday. Yes, a punting opportunity.

      1. In a way-too-serious note, pretty sure there’s Gasly in the way

    3. What happens to the penalty points after the race ban? Are they reset to 0?

      1. That would make sense. Otherwise driver could be suspended several times in a year for basically same incidents.

      2. maarten.f1 (@)
        29th July 2017, 19:41

        @f1mre
        Yes they do:

        4.2 In accordance with Article 16.3, the stewards may impose penalty points on a driver’s Super Licence. If a driver accrues 12 penalty points his licence will be suspended for the following Event, following which 12 points will be removed from the licence. Penalty points will remain on a driver’s Super Licence for a period of 12 months after which they will be respectively removed on the 12 month anniversary of their imposition.

    4. What a great waste of an F1 seat. I still cannot believe how he’s still racing in F1 taking into account that the RBR junior drivers program has been ruthless, they even dropped drivers with good performances (Algersuari in 2011). Probably the russian market is very important to RBR for their energy drinks otherwise I don’t see the point from keeping him.

      1. @tifoso1989 I think VER (the other one) would be a better example – acording to my memory, anyway

        1. @tifoso1989 I thought it was curious how Tost felt the need to state Sainz was equally to blame for the collision at Silverstone. I really don’t think that’s far on Sainz at all.

          I was already surprised Kvyat was considered good enough for another year this season after last year. And now it seems they may pass Gasly over again to keep Kvyat for another season after his Red Bull demotion. I’m not convinced that decision is being made purely on Kvyat’s driving merit.

          1. You think Kvyat brings money?

            1. With the way Sochi is, I wouldn’t be surprised that state money is given to RBR for his seat.

          2. @keithcollantine
            I totally agree with you. It’s clear for me that there is something other than Kvyat driving ability that is keeping him safe at RBR. The other thing is that he has the same pigheaded attitude as Maldonado, he never accepts his faults and seems never to learn from them. You have the feeling that he enjoys some kind of backing…

        2. @davidnotcoulthard
          I just picked up randomly Algersuari, JEV is indeed a very good example.

      2. @tifoso1989
        Their junior program is a bit barebones right now. Gasly is the only driver on their books ready for F1, and he’s not all that great.

        1. @george
          Yes I know but Kvyat is disastrous at the moment. They could also do something à la Verstappen, find the great prospect of the moment and give him a race seat.

          1. How is he disastrous when he outperformed Ricciardo and Sainz, except having lots of mechanical glitches and failures.

            1. @regs He caused two major crashes in Austria (taking out Verstappen and Alonso) and in Britain where he wiped out his teammate. He also made a silly mistake in Canada and has scored just four points all season. He certainly isn’t beating Sainz either

            2. That was both’s faults, Sainz was also to blame. Team agreed on that. In Austria he had to run into dirt because of Sainz mistake, in Britain Sainz didn’t let him enough room, like Kvyat did in Copse, despite Sainz mistake.

              In Austria Verstappen has only to blame himself.

            3. @regs The only reason for Toro Rosso to keep Kvyat is that he outperformed Ricciardo in 2015, which suggests that he can be a good driver, but since his demotion to Toro Rosso his performances have been very poor. He’s been unlucky, but his collisions in Austria and Britain were absolutely his fault (see Keith’s earlier comment).

            4. @regs.. how is it Austria was according to you

              Verstappen has only to blame himself.

              He was hit by Alonso who on his turn was hit by the torpedo.

            5. @f1infigures every time his car was working he was better than Sainz.

              @seth-space he lost the start himself. and now here we goes again. ver takes out ric out of nowhere.

            6. @regs, his clutch was defect. The team acknowledge that. So nothing he could do.
              Today was very unlucky. But hey that’s racing and Max excused at once for his mistake. Something a lot of drivers do not.

      3. It kind of feels its a combi between Russian market being important for RB and Russian government probably arranging some cash flow through reduced import tax. Totally guessing here btw, no proof.

        1. Acronis is American company run by Russians.

    5. He impeded Perez as well in Q2

    6. Michael Brown (@)
      29th July 2017, 17:50

      Time to bring back JEV

      1. Or Buemi, he’s killing it in FE

    7. I have to say that 2 penalty points for overtaking someone off track is a bit harsch…

      We have seen quite a few overtakes with all 4 wheels over the white line over time and I can’t immagine everybody gets 2 points on their license every time. Also, the ‘not starting in the correct position’ incident wasn’t even dangerous… it’s still a starting box. That’s 4 unfair points out of 10 in my opinion. The other 6 were deserved but he shouldn’t be this close to a race ban.

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        30th July 2017, 9:34

        @jeffreyj
        I’d say at leased 4 of Kvyats penalty points are overly harsh. What he did in Canada didn’t seem that bad. It just seemed so unreasonable that they gave him the incorrect penalty and then had to make sure he served it all by giving him another. They should have just left it and realized that they just made a mistake. 2 penalty points for what he did was just too much. Especially as he had to retire anyway which wasn’t even his own fault. I also think 2 penalty points for what he did on Perez in the USA last year was too much. He braked late, but Perez literally did start to cut across Kvyat which resulted in Perez spinning. But it was just a spin and a bit of damage on the 1st lap. I really don’t think it was worth 2 penalty points. Maybe a drive through but that should have been it in my view. Although we all have to accept the penalties that have been given, to me it does seem that he has got penalty points for doing very minor things when others haven’t for doing something worse. For example, Perez made Kvyat retire in Monaco. Another incident involving these 2. Perez only got a small penalty but without penalty points! It does seem inconsistent. Kvyat and Sainz have both had messy moments this year as well as now having 17 penalty points between them. Doesn’t look good does it…. Drivers such as Ericsson who we often criticize for being poor is one of the 3 drivers to have no penalty points at all.

      2. I can’t agree about Canada, the start is still the most dangerous part of the race and the rules are intended to avoid causing a potentially dangerous situation or the need to abort the start.

        If a car does not get off on the parade lap in their correct position they have the whole lap (up until the first safety car line) to recover their position. If they are still out of position by the first safety car line they must enter the pitlane and instead start from there. This seems very sensible as it avoids any confusion with a driver trying to pull around other cars, or a car potentially becoming stranded on the grid and unable to pull into their box due to the other cars already being in their positions.

        It is the drivers responsibility to know these rules, his team should have told him to enter the pits, but he should also have been aware that he needed to do so.

    8. Kvyat is useless.

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        30th July 2017, 9:41

        Useless is an overly harsh word to describe Kvyat. He’s collected 4 points which while it isn’t much, if he hadn’t got them, the team would be tied with Hass. And It also can be said that the team would probably be further ahead if Sainz hasn’t made his mistakes too. Kvyat has made more mistakes, but he’s also had far worse luck than his team mate. Lets wait and see the 2nd half of the season to see if he has better luck and better races. He looked to be at around Sainz’s level by the end of last year in the final races. But he’s been up and down this year. He has been better than Sainz on a few occasions though even if it wasn’t outstanding.

    9. This was the teams fault. They asked him to bring the car back slowly, they should have warned him that car was approaching.
      As much as we may blame the drivers, Torro Rosso after all these years are making more fundamental mistakes than Haas who only just joined F1.
      I wonder if Redbull also use the team as a training ground for team personnel.

      1. I think the key part of the stewards wording is:

        “Kyvat was driving exceptionally slowly and taking the racing line at the end of Q1 when other drivers were attempting to set fast laps”

        Their view was probably that he should not have been on the racing line if he needed to go so slowly, especially when he knew that most of the cars on track at the time were on hot laps.

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