How Ferrari saved Leclerc from F1 weighbridge penalty

The Monegasque driver had been called in for a weight check towards the end of Q2, but did not see the signal and pushed on down the pitlane.

Had he gone to his Ferrari garage and the mechanics worked on the car, even just changing tyres, then that would have been enough to earn him a penalty for breaching the rules.

However, Ferrari had quickly spotted that the weighbridge request had been missed and immediately ordered the pole man to stop.

Mechanics then ran up the pitlane to push him back for the checks, which were passed without problem.

Leclerc confessed that stopping had been totally down to his Ferrari team as he had not spotted the stop sign, and actually doesn’t even know where it was.

“It’s a very tricky one here, because we get into the pits and I actually don’t even know where the panel is, and whether it’s on the right or left,” he said. “But it’s very far, far right or far left, so you don’t look in that direction.

“Actually, I didn’t see at all that I was called to the weighbridge. But luckily for me, the team saw the alarm and just told me to stop and they pushed me back. It wasn’t great for being into the same sequence of the others after that, but again, we got out of this tricky situation.”

F1’s rules are pretty strict when it comes to drivers missing the weighbridge and teams working on the cars.

At the 2019 Baku Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly had to start from the pitlane after missing a weight check in practice and Red Bull worked on his car – while the same happened to Sergio Perez at that year’s United States Grand Prix.

F1’s rules are clear that missing a weighbridge will only escape sanction if teams immediately respond to their drivers’ error.

Article 35.1 b) states: “Any driver who fails to stop when asked to do so, and then fails to bring the car back to the FIA garage, or if work is carried out on the car before it is returned to the FIA garage, will be…