charles leclerc ended the drama of the last laps in Miami, where he went off, touched the wall (after being passed by Piastri) and then lost position with Russell and Verstappen to fall from third to sixth… And the stewards They ended up giving him a sanction that was considered very severe. The Ferrari driver was in the initial fight for the lead, then for the podium and ended up falling off a cliff in the classification.
As a resultFranco Colapinto rose to seventh place, the best position of his life in F1achieved before thousands of compatriots and a multitude of illustrious Argentines such as Messi, Del Potro or De Paul, inter alia. A day that will not be forgotten after the massive exhibition in Buenos Aires a week ago.
The FIA stewards considered that Leclerc left the track to defend himself on many occasions, without being able to justify this fact with any legal reason. And they applied a drive trough (pass without stopping in the pits) or the equivalent of 20 seconds. Charles fell to eighth, 10 seconds behind Colapinto and nine ahead of Carlos Sainz.
Verstappen also received a 5-second penalty for another reason, but being 10 seconds ahead of Leclerc in the final standings, he maintained fifth, while Hamilton moved up to sixth.
The statement:
Made:Car number 16 left the track on several occasions without justification.
Infringement:Non-compliance with article B1.8.6 of the FIA F1 Regulations.
Decision: Penalty for passing through the pits imposed after the race.
(20 seconds are added to the race time).
Reason: lThe stewards listened to the driver of car number 16 (Charles Leclerc), the team representative and reviewed the data from the positioning/marshalling system, the video, the team radio and the on-board video recordings.
The number 16 car spun on the last lap in Turn 3 and hit the wall, but continued on the track. The driver informed us that the car seemed fine, except that it was not negotiating right corners properly.
Given this problem, he was forced to make shortcuts in the chicanes on the way to the checkered flag.
We determined that the fact that he had to cut off at chicanes (i.e., go off the track) gave him a lasting advantage in doing so. The fact that it had a mechanical problem was not a justifiable reason.
Consequently, we imposed a pit stop penalty on the number 16 car, given the number of times the car went off the track and gained an advantage.
We also considered whether there was an additional violation by continuing to drive a car with an obvious and discernible mechanical problem. We determined that there was no evidence of an obvious or discernible mechanical problem. Therefore, we do not take any further action regarding that potential violation.
