Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, Imola, 2021

Stroll loses seventh place to Gasly after post-race penalty for lap 11 pass

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix

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Lance Stroll has lost his seventh-place finish in the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after being penalised for overtaking a rival off the track.

The Aston Martin driver was found to take overtaken Pierre Gasly by leaving the circuit at Tamburello on lap 11. He was given a five-second time penalty.

As Gasly finished less than a second behind him, Stroll therefore falls to eighth place behind his rival in the final classification. The incident was not investigated until after the race.

“Having reviewed the video and heard from the drivers, the stewards conclude that car 18 [Stroll] was not able to complete his pass on car 10 [Gasly] at turns two and three without leaving the track completely short-cutting turn three and returning on the track ahead of car 10. He then failed to give the position back.

“In hearing from the drivers the Stewards accepted that car 18 was ahead of car 10 at the point he left the track, but that he was in that position because of a manoeuvre that he was not able to complete on the track given the wet conditions.”

The stewards also handed Stroll a penalty point on his licence, putting him on a total of four.

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Keith Collantine
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20 comments on “Stroll loses seventh place to Gasly after post-race penalty for lap 11 pass”

  1. What about Kimi?

    1. someone or something
      18th April 2021, 20:24

      10 seconds stop-and-go = 30 seconds penalty, promoting Ocon to 9th an Alonso to 10th etc.

  2. Stroll was in the wrong here with this manoeuvre but it is so so so unfair to apply this penalty after the race! I think if the stewards miss something like this then it would be better to just let it slide. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

    1. I was going to write much the same

      No point doing these things after the race.

      That said, all drivers and teams know that over taking off the track is a no no so stroll should have just given the spot back at the time.

    2. +1 @georgeod They could have at least applied the penalty during the race(at some point) and not 2H after it’s ending.

      Race control needs to step up their operations, they really create an issue for participants and viewers with some of their decisions

    3. Disagree, if the move was illegal then it makessense he was penalised, letting it slide just cause the race ended is wrong.

      1. Jonathan Parkin
        18th April 2021, 21:49

        But it should have been at a reasonable time not after the race. One of the issues Ferrari had with the penalty Michael Schumacher got at Silverstone in 1998 was the penalty was issued after the time limit in the rules.

        Any incident on Lap 11 should be dealt with during the race not after

  3. Not related to this incident but on the subject of penalties…

    Not saying it was intentional by the stewards but the timing of Seb’s stop-go penalty was brutal! I appreciate there was a fair bit going on at the start with crashes and the safety car but still seemed a bit delayed than it should have been if it was a cut-and-dry pre-race infraction. I’m no Seb fan so not being salty but there would have been uproar if that had happened to one of the frontrunners (remember last year in Imola when fans felt the stewards helped Lewis by declaring VSC at the ideal time for him).

  4. And a penalty point? Really?

  5. I saw that at the time and was surprised there was no immediate investigation. I’d guess AM and Stroll knew it wasn’t a fair pass, but we’re hoping to get far enough up thebroad for any eventual penalty not to change anything- like Hulkenberg and Perez in Abu Dhabi a couple of years ago.

  6. Brief replay footage got shown on the world feed. How could Stroll have benefitted as driving on a gravel trap is slower than on track anyway? Gasly would’ve immediately re-passed had he been closer. Not Stroll’s fault Gasly didn’t use his opportunity.

    1. He benefitted by getting ahead of Gasly…

  7. I note the unjust and a excellent example of FIA double standards penalty for Raikonnen is not news.

    1. someone or something
      18th April 2021, 20:26

      Double standards? Unjust? What? Do you know more than we do?

      1. Please explain to me how passing two cars in a 10s penalty but letting two cars through is a 30s one

        1. someone or something
          21st April 2021, 2:14

          @paeschli
          Different infractions, different rules. “Double standards” strongly implies unequal treatment under similar circumstances. That is not the case here, the rules clearly dictated Räikkönen’s penalty. Pérez’s actions infringed against a different rule, for which the Stewards have several penalties to choose from, and they chose a penalty that was consistent with similar cases in the past.
          I’m not saying that Räikkönen’s offence was worse than Pérez’s. It clearly wasn’t. But there was no foul play, no double standards, just clearly defined rules that didn’t quite work out as expected under unusual circumstances.

  8. I’m surprised they knew what the track is. Was it the white line or kerbs? If kerb, which part of the kerb was the track, and which weren’t? Were the drivers told?

  9. It seems most of the time the stewards can’t keep up with the racing. They look like old people trying to figure out their first smartphone or something. Clumsy to put it mild. Both penalties to AM could be correct (doubt the penalty point) but the timing is absolutely ridiculous. Vettel could have had his penalty at 4m59 before the race start.
    They seem generally overwhelmed.

    1. Yep, stewarding should be done quicker. A penalty for a quite obvious overtake with cuttting + not giveing back the position, handed over hours later? I think stewards should be provided with good and quick tools, supported by data engineering, and all access telemetry, and if they are can’t keep up with the tech level, then find another role for them if they want to do something at race wekends. I would not mind more stewards if they are deciding this slowly, but that is not a final solution, maybe an initial fx. This GP had an incredible penalty shower after the race, and again we have seen examples that the book of rules, could be reviewed and ratianalised even by some competetnt persosn as a full time job, or by a comittee regularly, because, there were a good amount of interesting moments at this race. For example Kimi’s penalty, and Perez’s one, about takeing positions or laps back behind SC’s or before restarts at red flagged races. I do not mind Leclerc’s one, before the start of the race so much, because it was the warm up lap, the race was not started practically, but the other two hints on rules which could be fixed. Not to mention rethinking the track limits, and some sensible and likely stricter and more quickly enforced rules about them.

  10. In a track full of grass and gravel there’s literally no point in policing track limits, the track does it for you. In a car park like Bahreïn or Any Dhabi it’s obviously different

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