Photo: Alastair Staley/GP2 Series Media Service
Sergio Canamasas has been excluded from the result of GP2 qualifying at Sakhir after being found guilty of making several “deliberate” changes of direction to force Kevin Ceccon off-track at the end of the session.
Stewards deemed that Caterham driver Canamasas “deliberately moved direction twice in order to move Ceccon off the circuit” as he attempted to pass the Italian.
Then once the chequered flag had fallen, Canamasas waited up for Ceccon and made another deliberate move towards the Trident driver.
Spaniard Canamasas had set the 16th fastest time but will now have to start from the back of the grid for Saturday’s feature race.
Meanwhile, 17th place qualifier Kevin Giovesi was found to have impeded Johnny Cecotto. He was handed a three-place grid drop, but the penalties for Canamasas and James Calado mean he will start 18th.
PaddockScout Comment
By Peter Allen
This is the latest in a long line of worrying incidents from Canamasas since he began racing in GP2 just 12 races ago at Hockenheim in July of last year. At the Hungaroring he gave Simon Trummer a shove coming out of the final corner, sending his rival across the finish line while up against the barrier. Next time out in Spa he squeezed Nathanael Berthon against the pit wall at high speed while trying to defend his position towards Eau Rouge. At the season finale in Singapore he failed to come in for a drive-through penalty and ignored the subsequent black flag.
His latest misdemeanour comes just one race weekend after Cecotto also made a similar deliberate move to try and force a driver off track in retaliation. Even then, Canamasas was shown to aggressively square up to Berthon out of the car in parc ferme afterwards. Like another aforementioned Spanish-speaking driver, he seems to have a problem when things don’t go his way. If a driver gets upset at something, there are civil ways of dealing with it. Driving your car towards that of your rival is not the answer. It’s inexcusable at any level.
He’s another driver giving the rest of the GP2 grid a bad name, when most of them don’t deserve it.
It could certainly be argued Canamasas has racked up enough infringements now to be banned for a race weekend, and this exclusion should absolutely act as a final warning. Anything else from him and he should go.