Isack Hadjar has lost his victory in today’s Formula 2 sprint race after being blamed for causing the crash at the start of the race.
Roman Stanek therefore inherits the win, which is his first in the series.
Hadjar was given a 10-second time penalty for triggering a collision which put Gabriel Bortoleto and Pepe Marti out of the race. The pair tangled as the cars pulled away from the grid at the start, both spinning into a barrier at the pit lane exit.
The three drivers started the race immediately behind pole-winner Stanek. Bortoleto made a slow getaway from second and was being passed by Red Bull juniors Hadjar and Marti when collision occured.
The stewards spoke to all three drivers and ruled Hadjar was to blame for the collision because he moved “significantly” to the right, towards his team mate Marti, leading him to make contact with Bortoleto.
“The driver of car 10 [Bortoleto] explained that both cars 20 [Hadjar] and 21 [Marti] had a better start than him and admitted seeing car 21 moving to the left to try to overtake him,” the stewards explained. “He also explained that he kept steering straight to leave enough room for car 21, when he suddenly felt a heavy hit on the left-hand side of his car.
“The driver of car 21 [Marti] explained that he had a good launch, saw a gap between cars 10 and 20 and started the overtaking manoeuvre between both cars. He also explained that his front axle was alongside car 10, when the gap disappeared and he felt a big hit.
“The driver of car 20 explained that he barely moved from the left-hand side of the track when he made contact with car 21. He also admitted not seeing his team mate alongside him.”
The stewards said footage of the crash showed Hadjar “moved significantly to the right to get a run on the car in front of him [Stanek] without realising that car 21 had a significant portion of his car alongside him. This move caused car 21 to move slightly to the right to take avoiding action.
“As a result, car 21 made contact with car 10. A second contact occurred between car 20 and 21. The stewards determined that car 20 was predominantly to blame for the collision.”
Hadjar’s time penalty drops him to sixth place in the classification. While Stanek claims the victory, Dennis Hauger moves up to second ahead of Kush Maini, Franco Colapino and Ritomo Miyata ahead of Hadjar.
Hadjar is the second driver to lose an F2 win this year due to a penalty. Richard Verschoor lost his sprint race win in Jeddah…
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