Stewards explain late penalty for Hulkenberg which prevented Albon joining Q2

Alexander Albon was denied the chance to participate in Q2 when the stewards issued a penalty to rival Nico Hulkenberg too late in qualifying.

Hulkenberg originally beat Albon to the final place in Q2 by less than a tenth of a second. He went on to participate in Q2, where he was eliminated.

However the stewards later decided Hulkenberg exceeded track limits at turn 11 during his final flying lap in Q1. They therefore deleted that time, which meant he should not have reached Q2, and therefore all his subsequent lap times were struck.

The Sauber driver told his race engineer Steven Petrik during Q1 he had made a mistake at that point on the lap. “I fucked up turn 11,” he admitted.

The stewards later ruled Hulkenberg “clearly exceeded track limits in turn 11.”

“However this was not reported to the stewards until Q2 had commenced. Car 27’s [Hulkenberg’s] time recorded on the lap that track limits were exceeded, was sufficient to place it in Q2. Hence at the time the Stewards were informed that car 27 had breached the Race Director’s Event Notes and that its lap should have been deleted, it was already on track in Q2.”

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A similar situation occured at the Austrian Grand Prix in 2022, when Sergio Perez was incorrectly allowed to participate in Q3, and Pierre Gasly was denied a chance to participate in the session. The stewards handled both situations the same way.

“As this is an unusual situation, the stewards have decided to settle the matter by exercising their authority under Article 11.9.2.a of the FIA International Sporting Code.”

No drivers had any lap times deleted for running wide at turn 11 in qualifying or the grand prix in Bahrain last year. The FIA did not regard the corner a priority for monitoring track limits and therefore was slow to spot Hulkenberg’s infraction.

“There are a number of track limit hot spots which are monitored continuously live,” a spokesperson for the governing body explained. “Track limit hot spots are given precedence. Based on previous sessions, turn 11 was not deemed to be an area of focus for track limits. In hindsight, it should have been higher on our priority list as a corner.

“Checks in areas of the circuit such as turn 11 take a bit longer than those of a high priority.
Unfortunately, in this case due to the timing of the check it was not possible to act before the start of Q2. As soon as we became aware of the incident, we acted on it.

“We are building towards increased resources and improved systems and processes. On this occasion, we got it wrong.”

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Albon said his final lap in Q1 should have been quicker anyway, due to a delay in leaving his garage.

“We need to understand what went on,” he said. “We were supposed to go out on track with four minutes to go but we ended up getting stuck in that pit exit traffic jam.

“We were there for a few minutes, lost about 20-25 degrees of tyre temperature and then we were fighting to make the flag. So we had to push around, overtook a few cars, started the lap and the tyres were cold.

“So it’s more procedural [matters] I think that we just need to tidy up for the rest of the year. We’re not normally bad at these kinds of things but we need to review it and not have it happen again for the next time.”

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