Four more drivers have received penalty points on their licences for incidents during the Qatar Grand Prix.
George Russell, Liam Lawson, Alexander Albon and Lance Stroll joined Lando Norris in collecting penalty points during Sunday’s race.The Mercedes driver received a single penalty point for falling more than 10 car lengths behind the Safety Car when it was deployed during the race. “The evidence clearly showed that car 63 was more than 125 metres, which is more than 20 car lengths, behind the car in front during the Safety Car period,” noted the stewards.
The other three drivers were all penalised for collisions with rivals. Stroll ran into Albon at turn four on the first lap, while the Williams driver later collided with Kevin Magnussen at turn one. Liam Lawson also clashed with Valtteri Bottas in a similar fashion at the first corner.
Regarding Stroll, the stewards noted that “he entered turn four, rode the kerb which created understeer, taking his car into the side of [Albon]” and “despite this being a lap one incident, the collision was not the result of normal lap one crowding, so the usual tolerance for lap one instances is not applicable.”
Stroll moves on to a total of four penalty points, while the other drivers all collected their first points of the current 12-month period.
Oscar Piastri was given a formal warning, but no points on his licence, for a pre-race incident when he swerved past two drivers on his way into the pits. “The driver explained the two cars in front of him were travelling very slowly and he wished to overtake them,” noted the stewards.
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“The team provided telemetry evidence that [Piastri] was not travelling at excessive speed and that the driver was in control at all times. Although the manoeuvre appeared erratic on the video, we did not determine that it was dangerous. However such erratic manoeuvres should be avoided, hence the penalty of a formal warning is applied.”
Sergio Perez was cleared of driving dangerously when he spun out of the race. The stewards looked into the incident as it appeared he drove towards the oncoming traffic, but learned he had been trying to spin his car around when this happened and suffered a technical problem.
“Car 11 spun and stopped sideways on the right hand side of the track,” the stewards noted. “The driver then appeared to drive directly across the track at right angles to the oncoming traffic.
“However the evidence tabled showed that the driver attempted to do a rapid 90-degree clockwise spin but in doing so, experienced clutch failure which resulted in the car travelling across the track. Whilst this appeared potentially dangerous from the video, the attempted move by the driver was possible to execute under normal circumstances and only the failure of the clutch caused the reported incident.”
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2024 Qatar Grand Prix
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Ajaxn
1st December 2024, 22:08
You missed Hamilton’s drive-through for speeding in the pit lane.
Ajaxn
1st December 2024, 22:10
whoops – Penalty but no points.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
1st December 2024, 22:12
That’ll stop the drivers complaining about the FIA, penalty points for everyone!
LOL
1st December 2024, 23:16
Nah. It feels worse actually. If it’s such a safety issue that you need to pull a penalty out of left field for Lando’s yellow infringement, how is it also not a penalty point?? Unbalanced and over reactive penalty feels like
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
1st December 2024, 22:14
Glad to see this reasoning being used, as it should have been in many other previous instances, but hopefully this will be the default going forward. It’s fine to have some leniency in situations which involve multiple cars in close proximity, where it may not be possible to know exactly where each car is or how it will react, but 1 on 1 incidents which just happen to occur on lap one shouldn’t receive any special dispensation.
Ajaxn
1st December 2024, 22:26
Just another bureaucracy-affected race in that part of the world. A fitting anti-climax to the season.
Captain_Slow
1st December 2024, 23:18
Anyone know why Albon was allowed to finish the race with no right side mirror?
Lyndamarks
1st December 2024, 23:39
The show that used to be a sport continues to become an even bigger joke than it already had become.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
2nd December 2024, 0:53
I still can’t see the yellow flags – where are they?
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
2nd December 2024, 1:08
I got it @53:20 – on the left – so hard to see. It will be interesting if that changes the order of the WDC.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
2nd December 2024, 5:20
So which came first, the car problem or the spin? Seems like he burned the clutch somehow while recovering from a self inflicted spin, rather than the car developing a problem leading to the spin.