Max Verstappen and George Russell traded verbal blows ahead of this weekend’s race over the incident which cost the Red Bull driver pole position for last weekend’s race.
The pair revealed details over how they presented their cases to the stewards which cast new light on the decision which left Verstappen incensed at his rival.
The incident was one of the first cases of a driver being penalised as a consequence of rules F1 brought in just over a year ago enforcing a maximum time between the Safety Car Line Two (at the pit lane exit) and Safety Car Line One (at the pit lane entrance). Many drivers have exceeded the time limit over the course of the year but until last weekend none had picked up a significant penalty.
Exceeding the maximum time does not automatically trigger a penalty because a driver might find themselves forced to impede a rival in order to stay within the time. So for all the drivers who do exceed the time, often dozens per weekend, the stewards check video, timing and other positioning data to make sure they didn’t hold up another car.
In most cases the stewards have then ruled: “The drivers took appropriate actions to not impede other drivers, and in all cases, they slowed down significantly to allow other drivers to pass while giving those drivers a clear track. The stewards therefore determine that all drivers concerned did not drive ‘unnecessarily slowly’, and that they were above the maximum time because they took appropriate steps.”
This was what the stewards decided for 38 out of 40 cases they looked at in the sprint race qualifying session on Friday. However two drivers were given reprimands – Sergio Perez and Yuki Tsunoda.
In both cases the stewards noted they did not hold up any other drivers, but it showed how sensitive they were to drivers trying to exploit the compliance with the maximum delta time to cool their tyres more and gain an advantage. In Tsunoda’s case they pointed out he had an opportunity to comply with the time: “The driver could have closed the gap prior to reaching the last corner.”
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In Qatar the situation was more complicated than usual because teams were using a mixture of approaches to prepare their tyres. This was true of Verstappen, Russell and another driver who interacted with their cars at the crucial moment in Q3: Fernando Alonso.
Red Bull chose an unusual…
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