Lewis Hamilton and his rivals Roman Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen, and Nicholas Latifi were called to the race stewards for the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi after the qualifying session.
The stewards reproached these four drivers for not having respected the compulsory procedure to rejoin the track at Turn 2 when a driver crosses the turn.
All drivers are required to follow a signposted course at Turn 2 before they can reach the track safely, but it seems that these four pilots did not respect the rule in qualifying.
“The driver left the track at turn 2 and did not manage to re-join the track as defined in the Event Notes (v3) 22.1.” a stewards said in statement.
“The driver accepted that he had not followed the instructions and further he accepted that in a race there would be a penalty. The Stewards determined that there was no advantage, as the relevant lap time was deleted according to Doc 27.
“Furthermore, to be consistent with previous decisions, the Stewards considered the precedents set out in Doc. 25 of the 2018 Spanish Gran Prix and Doc. 31 of the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix.
“The Stewards remind all teams and drivers, that a failure to negotiate turn 2 as defined in the Event Notes during the race will likely lead to a 5 sec time penalty,” he added.
As soon as the FIA Stewards publish the verdict of this investigation as well as the starting grid below in the event of a penalty imposed.
“It was one of the worst qualifying sessions, it was horrible! Heart in your mouth the whole way. I got the time taken way, which is the first time I’ve gone wide there the whole weekend.” Hamilton said.
“I wanted to stay out and do another lap just to get a banker but they said ‘come in, get new tyres’ and then the red flag came out. It was a real risk once we got out on that next tyre at the end.” Hamilton added.
