Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Roman Bilinski has been awarded his maiden FIA Formula 3 win after Tim Tramnitz was penalised.
Tramnitz won the race on the road but was summoned to see the stewards over an alleged failure to engage the start set-up procedure at the start of the formation lap.
As outlined by the stewards’ report, “a defined set-up procedure activation is mandatory for the start of the formation lap and start of the race.
“As usual, Race Control checked all cars regarding the engagement of the start set-up procedure at the start of the formation lap and found that only car 17 [Tramnitz] had not engaged it.”
This was a breach of Article 1.6.1 of the technical regulations and Article 11.15 of the F3 user manual, and Tramnitz was given a 10-second time penalty.
This demoted him to 18th in the results and dents his hopes of improving upon his fourth place in the drivers’ standings ahead of Sunday’s season-ending sprint race.
Noel Leon and Rafael Camara were also penalised after the race. Leon was given a five-second penalty for the contact with Charlie Wurz that also impacted Brando Badoer as they tried to go three-wide into the first corner late in the race.
The stewards explained that they considered “the highly dynamic and confusion situation to be a mitigating circumstance, with Leon surprised to hear that they were three-wide into the corner” and thus penalised him only 5s rather than the usual 10s. Leon drops from eighth to 19th in the results.
Camara was given a 10s penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage while defending against fellow Ferrari junior Tuukka Taponen. This demoted the champion from 12th to 25th after he had worked his way up from 30th and last on the grid.