Sergio Perez has been given a formal warning by the stewards of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for insulting them after he was given a penalty.
The Red Bull driver told his team “the stewards are a joke” on his radio at the end of the race. He was unhappy about a five-second time penalty he had been given for colliding with Lando Norris, which dropped him out of the podium places.
Perez was also given two endorsement points on his licence for his tangle with this McLaren rival at turn six. He claimed the inside line for the corner but the pair made contact as they rounded the left-hander and Norris took to the run-off area.
The stewards held Perez responded for the collision, stating: “Coming into turn six, notwithstanding that car 11 [Perez] was alongside car four [Norris], the driver of car 11 dived in late, missed the apex of the corner and understeered towards the outside of the corner colliding with car four.”
Perez’s two penalty points mean he is now on a total of seven for the current 12-month period. Any driver who reaches 12 points receives an automatic one-race ban.
He got himself in further trouble with the stewards after crossing the line. Told by race engineer Hugo Bird his penalty had dropped him from second place to fourth, Perez vented his frustration about the decision.
“The stewards are a joke, man,” he replied. “I cannot believe it. They have been very bad this year but this is a joke. That was really a joke.”
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“I don’t know what they were looking at,” Bird agreed. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told him: “You don’t deserve a penalty for that. If anything it looked like a racing incident.”
The stewards summoned Perez for a breach of article 12.2.1.k of the International Sporting Code which forbids “Any misconduct towards […] officers or member of the staff of the FIA” and others. The original document stated the incident occured at 4:31pm, around half an hour before the start, but a later document revised that to 6:31pm, when the race concluded.
Perez apologised to the stewards for his comments. The stewards told him “they had no issue with someone disagreeing with their decisions, however comments that amount to personal insults are a breach of the International Sporting Code.”
“The driver made a genuine and sincere apology to each of the stewards and explained that he made the comments in the heat of the moment and did not consider the fact that…
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