Sergio Perez, Racing Point, Spa-Francorchamps, 2020

Perez given formal warning for impeding Grosjean

2020 Belgian Grand Prix

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Sergio Perez has been given an official warning by the stewards for impeding Romain Grosjean during final practice.

The Haas driver said Perez’s driving was “dangerous”. The stewards said it was “obvious” Perez had impeded him.

“The stewards heard from the driver of car 11 (Sergio Perez) and team representative and have reviewed multiple angles of video evidence, and radio calls to the drivers. It was obvious that car 11 unnecessarily impeded car eight. The driver of car 11 conceded that he had been warned by the team of the approach of car eight and had accelerated in order to try to give car eight ‘a tow’. He conceded he could have moved off line.

“The stewards note that normally action is not taken in relation to impeding in free practice sessions however in view of the emphasis that has been placed on this by the race director, it was decided to issue a formal warning in this case, and to also note that as always, particular attention will be paid to impeding during qualification.”

The formal warning is a recently-introduced sanction which does not carry a sporting penalty.

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Update: This article has been revised to reflect a correction in the stewards’ document, which originally stated Perez tried “to try to give car eight ‘a tow'”.

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2020 Belgian 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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7 comments on “Perez given formal warning for impeding Grosjean”

  1. I knew it.

  2. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    29th August 2020, 13:10

    In terms of getting out the way despite being given warning, I feel perez is probably one of the worst drivers out there for this. With Spain last time out being another example. Grosjean may have been pretty poor with verstappen in practice one of the two times in britain this year, but it has been confirmed that bizarrely, Haas don’t warn their drivers of upcoming traffic and he didn’t get investigated for that anyway

  3. The driver of car 11 (…) had accelerated in order to try to give car 11 “a tow”

    I haven’t seen the incident, but it seems hard to give oneself a tow?

    1. @sihrtogg Probably something they copied from Mercedes?

      1. @psynrg what do you mean? did you see car 44 giving car 44 a tow before?

  4. Will be quite a bit of this during Q1 especially I’d think. Lets see how they manage this time.

  5. So will they not use reprimands anymore? That was at least meaningful, because if you racked up a few, you at least got a real penalty. These “formal warnings” seem to be nothings.

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