The FIA stewards fined Racing Bulls €5,000 (£4,200) for causing a potentially unsafe incident in the pits during qualifying.
Max Verstappen swerved to avoid Isack Hadjar when Racing Bulls sent their driver out of the garage into the fast lane of the pits during Q3.
After studying footage and speaking to both drivers the stewards noted Hadjar’s departure from his garage was slightly delayed but ruled the team was nonetheless responsible. The team accepted it had made a mistake.
“The driver of car six [Hadjar] stated that he followed the instructions of his pit lane representative (‘the Number One’) and came out of the garage when requested to do so. He was slightly late in exiting the garage but in any event it was clear that the release was late and that resulted in car six being released into the path of car [Verstappen].”
“The driver of car one had to take evasive action to avoid a collision or risk flat-spotting his tyres if he braked hard,” the stewards concluded.
Hadjar will start the race from seventh on the grid, three places behind Verstappen.
The stewards also cleared Oliver Bearman of impeding Lance Stroll during Q1 after speaking to the pair.
“[Stroll] informed us that although car 87 [Bearman] came into the racing line after turn 13 he was not impeded and his lap time was not impacted. We confirmed this from the telemetry. While [Bearman] acknowledged that with the benefit of hindsight he could have done more to get out of the way, in the circumstances, he did his best not to impact Stroll, which Stroll accepted.”
Bearman failed to progress from the first round of qualifying, though Stroll did. The Aston Martin driver went on to qualify 14th.
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