€5,000 fine for Lance Stroll and Logan Sargeant after their Free Practice 1
The first free practice session of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was marked by the significant presence of young drivers, including some from F2, F3 and even Formula E. In total, there were 10 drivers, but it was two regulars of the premier category who were caught by the stewards.
Lance Stroll receives a fine of €5,000 for driving unnecessarily slowly
The commissioners heard from car 18 driver, Lance Stroll, and car 42 driver, Frederik Vesti, as well as representatives from Mercedes and Aston Martin teams. After examining data from the positioning/ranking system, video footage, team radio messages, and onboard video evidence, the commissioners deemed that Lance Stroll impeded Vesti and could have caused a collision.
However, it is established that the British driver could not see the approaching car in his rear-view mirrors and the team couldn’t warn him early enough. The incident occurred in less than a second. The driver stayed on his line, thus there was no risk of collision, but the team failed to keep him properly informed about Vesti’s car approaching.
The commissioners’ report notably states a need for teams to effectively communicate the approach of other cars to their drivers, as the Abu Dhabi circuit is a circuit where there are numerous corners with limited rear visibility and a risk of high speed deltas between preparation laps and push laps.
« For this reason, a fine for the team is appropriate, concludes the report.
Logan Sargeant also receives a fine of €5,000 for dangerous driving
For this incident, the driver of car 2, Logan Sargeant, and representatives from Williams and Alpine were summoned. Once again, the commissioners examined the data from the positioning/ranking system, the video, the team radio, and the onboard video evidence, and concluded that the positioning of the Williams car was problematic.
« The driver was only notified of the approach of car 61 (Jack Doohan) 1 second before its arrival. This could easily have caused a collision. »
As a mitigation, it has been noted that 50% of the squad consisted of substitute drivers, resulting in numerous different race strategies in place, making it difficult for teams to predict whether the cars would be doing push laps or not.
However, as with Stroll’s verdict, the stewards have deemed that it is essential for the priority of radio communications to be given to alerting the driver of the presence of other cars, rather than providing information for the preparation of a push lap.
As a result, a fine for the team is justified, specifying at the end, a reprimand is necessary for the driver because he changed direction too late instead of staying on a predictable trajectory.
