Doriane Pin has lost her victory in the second F1 Academy race in Jeddah after she was penalised for taking the chequered flag twice.
The Prema driver, who is backed by Mercedes, dominated the opening weekend of the F1 Academy series in Jeddah, taking pole position for both races and leading both encounters from lights to flag.However after taking the chequered flag in today’s second race, Pin carried on driving at full speed for an extra lap, apparently unaware the race was over. She crossed the finishing line for a second time, the chequered flag still being waved, before being informed by her Prema team that the race was over.
Taking the chequered flag twice is against regulations of most racing championships, including F1 Academy. The series’ sporting regulations state that after taking the chequered flag, all drivers “must proceed on the circuit directly to the parc ferme without any unnecessary delay”.
Pin was handed a drive-through penalty by the stewards for the infringement. As the race had already finished, 20 seconds were added to he race time. Pin therefore lose her win and falls to ninth, elevating Abbi Pulling, who scores her first F1 Academy victory.
Third-placed Maya Weug inherits second place and Nerea Marti is promoted to the final podium place. Jessica Edgar moves up to fourth position, with Hamda Al Qubaisi fifth, Bianca Bustamante sixth and Carrie Schreiner in seventh.
Amna Al Qubaisi was handed a five-second time penalty for passing Aurelia Nobels off track at turn 23, dropping the RB-supported driver from sixth place to eighth. Pin was ninth in the final classification after her penalty, with Chloe Chambers retaining the final point for 10th place.
Pulling also inherits the lead of the championship with her victory. The Alpine junior driver has 44 points, putting her ahead of Weug in second place and Pin in third.
F1 Academy’s second round will take place at the Miami International Autodrome in support of the Miami Grand Prix in early May.
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Tom Baker
9th March 2024, 20:04
Tom’s pulling the pin out now.
Tristan
9th March 2024, 20:08
Looking forward to a statement from the team or driver, fascinating mistake. If there was no radio failure and they just weren’t paying attention that’ll go down in history as one of those celebrating too early mistakes.
Mr B
9th March 2024, 20:13
Or actually not celebrating early enough!
Tristan
10th March 2024, 0:01
There’s footage of the team all celebrating the win on the pit wall as the driver is asking how many laps to go on the radio.
Zann (@zann)
11th March 2024, 8:51
Yes her engineer totally switched off. Didn’t reply, and then wasn’t even watching.
Amazing speed tho, so hopefully she’ll catch back up.
amped
11th March 2024, 13:08
That is irrelevant, a driver should be paying attention to track flags and not requiring their team to tell them.
Especially in the case of the chequered flag
Boomerang
9th March 2024, 20:28
It’s all about diversity. Why only one flag when you can have two?!
Dex
10th March 2024, 5:18
Then for starters the flag should include all the colours (or let’s just make it a rainbow), since there’s nothing diverse in “two” flags that are exactly the same. But you’re onto something here.
MichaelN
9th March 2024, 21:02
That’s unfortunate and rather clumsy. Did nobody at the team notice?
The penalty is fair because you really don’t want to have cars at racing speed when everyone is under the reasonable assumption that they’re cruising back to the pits.
Osnola
9th March 2024, 21:45
Amateurs…unbelievable!
amoeba (@amoeba)
9th March 2024, 22:25
The cars she might met after taking the flag were still racing as she finished 1st. Anyway, I agree with the penalty.
AlanD
10th March 2024, 1:02
It seems harsh to apply a time penalty for something that happened after the race, and for which there was no racing advantage in doing it. I accept that it is danwerous to continue at racing speeds, more so if it was a driver in second or third place who could well have tried a dangerous overtake of the cars in front of them, but they could do that for three quarters of a lap before realising the race was over and avoid a penalty provided they didn’t take the chequered flag again. This is a safety issue so I think the FIA ought to be asking why the driver didn’t know, didn’t see the chequered flag. I vaguely remember something about errors with waving the flag in F1 and talk of changing it to have a chequered flag on the wheel.
Aaron MacPhee
10th March 2024, 2:34
Just imagine if this was in a country where there were actually fans wanting to get on the track to see the podium ceremony? Or a track like Montreal where the trackside volunteers come out to celebrate the drivers? I can’t figure out if this was too much or too little focus. Definitely a dangerous lapse of something…
Jere (@jerejj)
10th March 2024, 7:06
Trackside marshals come out on more or less all circuits rather than only in Montreal, but indeed a dangerous lapse, but by the team.
AlanD
10th March 2024, 14:15
Dangewrous, yes, but as I said, the penalty isn’t for driving at racing speeds on that post-chequered lap, the penalty is for going past the chequered flag again, regardless of what speed they were driving. Remember 2022, Japan, the race that was about to hit the three hour event limit but the chequered flag was waved too early. No-one was sure at that point if the race was really over or not so Verstappen, who was leading, kept on driving at racing speeds for an extra lap, as did most drivers, but luckily the clarification came through in time to stop the lead drivers taking the flag a second time. It also happened in 2019 and 2018 that drivers were shown the flag too early and carried on pushing for another lap.
Matthew Ellis
10th March 2024, 11:08
Given F1 teams get into trouble if there is insufficient fule remaining for a sample to be taken, running an extra lap can definately have negative consequences.
Ultimately a silly error by the team.
Jere (@jerejj)
10th March 2024, 7:07
What a team error to not give her the info at the right time.
Dan
10th March 2024, 22:15
How do you that?