Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins has been disqualified from fourth place in today’s Formula 2 feature race in Baku.
The Alpine junior had finished 1.3 seconds shy of a third podium finish of the season, and moved his way up the championship standings, but now sits 15th in the points table and having now gone five races without points.
The reason Martins was disqualified was F2’s technical delegate had found after the feature race that the floor fins of his car 3.4 milimetres below the reference plane given by the series for those parts.
It means Prema’s Frederik Vesti now finishes fourth, and is now only three points off ART GP’s new championship leader Theo Pourchaire, with DAMS’ Arthur Leclerc earning a point by moving up from 11th place to 10th.
Martins got no penalty points on his license due to it being a breach of the technical regulations, but two of his rivals were directly punished by the stewards.
MP Motorsport’s Jehan Daruvala had a time penalty applied in-race for leaving the track and rejoining in the path of Rodin Carlin’s Zane Maloney, who had to take avoiding action to prevent a collision, and was issued two penalty points afterwards.
DAMS’ pre-race points leader Ayumu Iwasa meanwhile “did not comply with the delta time required at the end of the virtual safety car period” and was handed a five-second penaly post-race, which did not change his finishing position, and a penalty point.
Hitech GP escaped being penalised for leaving a wheel nut on the ground during Isack Hadjar’s pitstop, but Trident was not so lucky as it left two wheel nuts in the pitlane prior to a pitstop and was fined €500 by the race stewards. Its driver Clement Novalak was also reprimanded for changing direction twice as he defended from Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan at the finish.