Pierre Gasly penalized by the FIA for speeding under a red flag
The future Alpine driver was penalized with a drive-through, adding an additional 20 seconds to his race time, for speeding while the marshals waved the red flag.
It’s definitely a bad day for Pierre Gasly. The Frenchman had a very scary moment when he came dangerously close to a tractor on the track, which was busy removing Carlos Sainz’s crashed car. <a href="/f1/actualite/28686-pierre-gasly-a-croise-un-tracteur-sur-la-piste.html" title="Pierre Gasly encountered a tractor on the track.
"The future Alpine driver expressed his anger after the race regarding the dangerous situation, which recalled the terrible accident of Jules Bianchi on the same circuit in 2014."
Ironically, Pierre Gasly was implicated by the FIA for driving too fast at that moment, while the red flag was waved at Suzuka. The Frenchman indeed passed the accident site just moments after the officials displayed the red flag. He did not reduce his speed and was clocked at 251 kilometers per hour, which exceeds the speed limit under a red flag.
The FIA's decision came after the checkered flag: the AlphaTauri driver receives a drive through penalty, which translates to a 20-second penalty added to his final race time, causing him to drop from 17th to last position, giving way to Mick Schumacher. Pierre Gasly is also penalized with two penalty points on his license, bringing his total to 9 points in 12 months. Once a driver reaches 12 points, they can be suspended for the next race.
« After passing the incident site, car 10 continued under a red flag, at a speed that exceeded 200 km/h several times, and reached 251 km/h at one point. The driver admitted that he now understood that there could be marshals or obstacles on the track, and acknowledged that he was going too fast », the FIA stated in a press release.
This one, however, seems to have been “lenient” by taking into account Pierre Gasly’s reduced speed, as well as the surprise of seeing the tractor on the track: « To mitigate the penalty, we take into account the fact that, although the speed cannot be considered as “slow” as required by the regulations, it was lower than the maximum speed that could be reached under these conditions. We also consider the impact that the driver suffered when seeing a truck on the racing line at the corner of the incident. »
Hoping that such a dangerous situation will not happen again in the future. Twice is already twice too many for Suzuka.
