Kevin Magnussen has been given a formal reprimand for his incident with Charles Leclerc during the first practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix.
The stewards cleared Magnussen of impeding the Sauber, as he had backed off due to a yellow flag which had cleared by the time Leclerc reached it. However they ruled his movement towards Leclerc at the end of the pit straight was “potentially dangeroues”.Magnussen “was unaware that the [yellow] flag had cleared and that the driver of car 16 [Leclerc] who was immediately behind him had not aborted his lap as he had not been in the sector when it was yellow,” noted the stewards.
“The stewards accepted this explanation and found that there was not a case of unnecessarily impeding.”
“However, the Stewards reviewed the manoeuvre of car 20 [Magnussen] at the entry to turn one, where the driver of car 20 moved to the right in front of car 16 which was overtaking at the time. While the cars avoided a collision, the stewards deemed the manoeuvre to be potentially dangerous and unnecessary, and therefore a breach of article 27.4 [of the sporting regulations].”
Magnussen’s reprimand is the first he has received this season. He is already on eight penalty points for the current 12-month period, which is the most of any driver.
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Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
11th May 2018, 14:22
Clearly reprimands and penalty points are doing nothing to get him to modify his driving. He won’t learn until he’s made to sit out a race weekend. Regardless of the sport, few things hurt as much as seeing someone else participating in your place.
GS (@gsagostinho)
11th May 2018, 14:29
@velocityboy “The stewards accepted this explanation and found that there was not a case of unnecessarily impeding.”
Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
11th May 2018, 16:50
@gsagostinho please see the following:
Noco
11th May 2018, 14:43
Agreed. Either he’s doing it on purpose, or he’s unaware of other drivers around him, both are as a bad as each other and likely to cause a serious accident eventually.
Joao (@johnmilk)
11th May 2018, 14:55
asking for race bans seems so hot right now
ajpennypacker (@ajpennypacker)
11th May 2018, 16:22
Did he just do something stupid again in FP1?
https://www.instagram.com/p/BiovH0NFuE-/
Sonics (@sonicslv)
11th May 2018, 14:57
Sounds like just an honest mistake to me. A reprimand is fair enough.
Some people just want to see a villain and KMag just handed the role by them. Without the ‘I want to die in a race car’ and ‘most dangerous guy I’ve ever raced against’ saga in last race this will be a no news material.
anon
11th May 2018, 17:15
@sonicslv, the way in which Magnussen was swerving across in front of Leclerc does not look like an “honest mistake” though. It’s not like he was trying to take the racing line – Magnussen was moving a significant distance off the racing line in order to steer across Leclerc’s path – nor was there any obstruction in front of Magnussen that he was trying to avoid.
I can’t see how it was an “honest mistake” that he happened to steer to the right just as Leclerc was about to try and pass him – the move looks entirely intentional.
Dave
11th May 2018, 16:12
Not a grid penalty? Or a back-of-the-grid start?
Chaitanya
11th May 2018, 16:30
Not yet, but rate at which he is scoring penalty points it wont be too long.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
11th May 2018, 17:17
I’ve seen the footage from Magnussen’s OnBoard which someone captured from F1TV & I think he should have got a penalty for this because you can see him looking in the mirrors the whole way down the straight so he clearly knew Leclerc was there, Knew he had pulled out to pass him (Because he clearly looks in his right mirror before he moved right) & yet still decided to move over & squeeze him.
It was stupid, Dangerous & completely unnecessary in a practice session.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
11th May 2018, 17:18
Can’t find the video now but here are some screen-grabs.
https://twitter.com/Mattzel89/status/994907085061181440