Ferrari sees two penalties for Perez on Singapore GP safety car infringement

Race winner Perez faced an FIA stewards investigation for not sticking to within 10 car lengths behind the safety car during a race restart. Perez was given a five-second penalty and a reprimand for two incident of not staying within 10 car lengths behind the safety car, but kept the win by 2.595s from Charles Leclerc.

But Ferrari boss Binotto says he’s “curious” about the investigation because his team feels Perez potentially broke the rule on two occasions, which could have resulted in the Mexican being given the penalty twice.

Binotto, who referenced Antonio Giovinazzi getting a similar penalty, wanted to wait for the investigation outcome before judging the incidents, but hoped for a penalty to hand Leclerc the win.

“We need to wait on the stewards decision which will be at 23.55pm, I am very curious to see, there were two infringements behind the safety car, so it can twice be a penalty. But we can only trust on what they will decide,” Binotto told Sky Sports F1 before the outcome of Perez’s hearing with the stewards.

“We believe that’s the infringement, the last time it happened I think it was Giovinazzi in 2020, which was a five-second penalty [Giovinazzi got a 10-second penalty for driving too close to a crane behind the safety car in the 2019 Singapore GP].

“Again we are not there, we won’t participate in the summons, so it is difficult for us to judge. So we will simply wait and hopefully it can change the final result today.”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner doesn’t believe Perez would be penalised as he felt there are mitigating circumstances due to the F1 cars being spread out at the time while trying to maintain temperature in their tyres.

“They’ve heard his side of the story. But I think there’s so many precedents that we’ve seen, even in recent past where there’s been a concertina going on both up and down the field, we see it. We’ve seen it even on formation laps,” Horner said.

“I think, again, the mitigating surfaces were that the safety car was just driving so slow. And they’d spent what 30-odd laps on inter tyres, they’re all out there on a set of slicks.

“You could hear Checo screaming to get [on], because they pick him up first. So he got no temperature in his tyres. I’d be absolutely amazed if there was anything.”

Earlier in the season, Sebastian Vettel faced an investigation for the same offence at the Canadian GP and…