Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
FIA Formula 3 Championship stewards were busy on Friday evening at Spa-Francorchamps, dishing out grid penalties to six drivers for offences committed in qualifying.
The offenders were handed three-place drops for Saturday’s sprint race, for a variety of reasons.
Trident’s Sami Meguetounif ” left the track at turn 17 deliberately without a justifiable reason”, Van Amersfoort Racing’s Sophia Floersch did so at turn 16 “and gained an advantage”, AIX Racing’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Jenzer Motorsport’s Charlie Wurz did the same at turn 18, while Campos Racing’s Mari Boya was guilty of that at turns 17 and 18.
ART Grand Prix’s F3 debutant Tuukka Taponen “impeded cars on the racing line in the approach to turn 18”, and MP Motorsport’s Alex Dunne was investigated for impeding at the same time. He had been at the front of a pack of cars, bunching them at the end of the lap, but evaded punishment as he moved away from the racing line as he slowed.
Meguetounif is the highest placed of the penalised, as he will start eighth for the sprint race, with Taponen 16th, Floersch in 23rd, Boya in 25th and a back row occupied by Wurz and Inthraphuvasak.
In the qualifying press conference, Dunne was asked about the incident he was investigated over.
“There are rules in place,” he replied. “The rule is that you have to be off the racing line and in single file. But I think we’ve seen a few times that the rule hasn’t really been followed.
“I think it’s very difficult when you’re in the position. In this scenario I was at the front of the pack, so it didn’t really affect me too much. But I think when you’re in a scenario of quali, you have to put everything on the line, it’s before the last push.
“A slipstream is really crucial to this track, I think it’s always going to be a little bit of chaos. Everybody’s young. With us all being quite, I guess you could say, hot headed in qualifying. So everybody is really trying to find the perfect position, and in the end I think when it becomes a little bit of a car park, it gets quite aggressive.
“Though there are rules in place, in some scenarios, I think especially for the drivers who maybe didn’t have a perfect run one, so their run two is more important, they maybe put a little bit more on the line when trying to find a good position on track.”
He reckoned “on the first push of the second run today, everybody was quite calm”, and setting a personal best proved too much for most on their final lap.
Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli, who qualified third, proposed “to put a new rule that from a specific corner in the circuit you cannot slow down anymore”. While “there would be still some mess”, he reckoned it would leave “some time before starting the push lap to have the good gap to the car in front”.