Pierre Gasly, Red Bull, Baku City Circuit, 2019

Gasly disqualified from qualifying results

2019 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

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Pierre Gasly has been disqualified from the results of today’s qualifying session after the stewards found his Red Bull exceeded the maximum fuel flow rate.

“The stewards noted they had: “reviewed the evidence from the technical delegate and heard from the team representatives.”

“The stewards find that the fuel mass flow exceeded 100 kg/hour during the fastest lap set by car 10.”

Gasly was previously required to start the race from the pit lane for missing the weigh bridge during yesterday’s second practice session. He was also given a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change, which did not affect his starting position.

His exclusion from the qualifying results will also not affect his starting position. The FIA has confirmed he will start the race from the pit lane.

Gasly set the fastest time of Q1 on the lap where he exceeded the maximum fuel flow limit. He later said he had used race settings and not a qualifying mode on his engine during the lap. “We didn’t expect that kind of pace because we didn’t turn the power unit up,” he said, “we went into race mode to save some engine mileage and in the end the performance was good.”

“Pierre’s time in Q1 would have put him sixth on the grid,” said team principal Christian Horner before the penalty was announced. “A really encouraging display from Pierre and we now look forward to tomorrow’s race.”

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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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19 comments on “Gasly disqualified from qualifying results”

  1. A useless DSQ since he’s starting position was already set before qualifying had even started.

    1. He will now start from the pit lane of the previous race.

  2. Bet they’re gutted about that

  3. Maybe Red Bull was testing to see if they could get away with it.

    1. Aaaah… never thought about it that way

      1. Maybe it’s related to Honda’s new PU.

  4. Recently Craig Scarborough claimed teams were allowed to store 2 litres of fuel between the fuel flow meter and the engine, which I found very surprising, but as far as I know no one has contradicted Craig’s claim. Such a claim should have been immediately been denounced by the FIA because it would bring into question how credible any fuel flow violation disqualification is, but they don’t appear to have done so, suggesting Craig’s comment is true.
    Now the Stewards have asserted a driver, in this case Pierre Gasly, exceeded fuel flow violations, and have punished him. It will be very interesting to know how this violation was determined and to see the actual wording of the Disqualification notice.
    The reason being is the presence or absence of a reservoir between the Fuel Flow Meter and the engine would affect the short term accuracy of the Fuel Flow Meter.

    1. very interesting! weren’t they speaking about not getting a more powerful p-mode with the update, but getting it to run longer? Could it have something to do with this, I wonder?

    2. Is that not the fuel collector?
      In the tank there is a reservoir collecting fuel from several pumps. To avoid the influence of g forces on the fuel delivery.
      https://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/f1/technology-explained-f1-fuel-systems/

    3. what they do is to deploy 100kg/h even when they don’t need.

    4. Only the fuel flow sensor matters. So there’s nothing to wonder about. It showed more than the allowed fuel flow. They can do whatever they want before or after that, other rules permitting, such as the 2 liter rule you mentioned.
      If there’s a 2 liter limit after it you can be sure all of the engine manufacturers utilize it. I wonder that maybe Ferrari just optimized the engine to for higher bursts of power than any other manufacturer in the straights.

  5. Looks like a deliberate move from Red Bull either to test FIA fuel limit or testing Honda party mode or both.

    1. @ruliemaulana
      I was thinking the same thing. You don’t expect this kind of comedy of errors from Red Bull, they’re too clever for that!

    2. Indeed.

    3. Use the weigh bridge penalty as an opportunity to test something without any risks. The perfect engineering mindset.

    4. @ruliemaulana – very clever. I was wondering how they could be this stupid, but you made much more sense.

      If RBR didn’t do it for this reason, they really ought to employ you :)

    5. I had similar thoughts.

  6. Smart kids at Red Bull, it’s worth trying when there’s no risk attached. But I guess this time everyone else has learnt as much as them, had the FIA not picked it up however, they’d have had a freebie.

  7. Cheating?
    Nice.

    I wonder what kind of explanation RBR provided to FIA…

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