Photo: Red Bull
The stewards have already been busy after one day of Formula 2 and Formula 3 track action in Melbourne, with penalties and fines being handed out in both series.
In F2, Hitech GP’s Isack Hadjar has copped a three-place grid penalty for impeding Trident’s Roman Stanek at turns 11 and 13 during qualifying. Having gone fourth fastest, Hadjar would have lined up seventh on the reversed-grid for Saturday’s sprint race, but will now start from 10th place.
Earlier on Friday, DAMS’ Arthur Leclerc was reprimanded as at the end of practice he failed to leave the track at Turn 13 to head back to the support paddock, as had been required in the race director’s notes for the weekend.
In F3 there were steward decisions taking place before anyone track action began, as they had to give permission to Campos Racing’s Christian Mansell to have a mobile phone in his car as he is a Type 1 diabetic and uses it to remotely monitor his blood sugar levels in real time.
Friday afternoon’s dramatic qualifying session caught out more than just those who crashed out, as teams and drivers came under fire from the stewards for making mistakes.
Rodin Carlin’s Hunter Yeany lost his fastest laptime due to setting it while double yellow flags were being waved on track, dropping him from 22nd to 26th in the qualifying classification, and was then handed a 10-place grid penalty and three penalty points on his racing license for speeding in the sector where the double waved yellows were.
With the penalty applied he will start the sprint race from 29th the grid, ahead of Campos’s Pepe Marti who had to get permission from the stewards to race after not setting a lap within 107% of the pole time in qualifying.
Marti had crashed out at Turn 10 early in the session and then been unable to return to track, but having been just 0.261 seconds off the pace in practice, which would have equated to being 0.706s off the qualifying benchmark, stewards deemed he had shown “acceptable” pace to be able to race.
The final driver to get into trouble was Carlin’s Ido Cohen, who was reprimanded for crossing the pit exit line in qualifying. The pit exit is significantly tighter and shorter than in previous year, although this weekend marks F3’s first time in Melbourne.
ART Grand Prix ended F3 qualifying with its drivers in second, 15th and 17th on the timesheet, and with some hefty fines.
The first €500 fine came after a team member attached the battery booster pack to Nikola Tsolov’s car while he was in the fast lane of the pitlane to help him get restarted. Work on cars is not permitted in the fast lane, and he held up several drivers by being stuck there.
Later ART GP was fined €2500 (of which €2000 is suspended) for working on wheels that were removed from front row qualifier Gregoire Saucy’s car once they were in parc ferme conditions. Stewards investigated the same issue with ART GP’s other two cars.