26/09/2020
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton is one of several drivers to escape punishment after failing to follow the race director's instructions relating to the manner in which they rejoined the track after running wide.
Shortly after the end of today's qualifying session, the world champion, Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Nicholas Latifi were summoned by the stewards for failing to follow the instructions of race director, Michael Masi, in relating to how drivers should rejoin the track at Turn 2 after going off.
The Stewards heard from all four drivers and their team representatives as well as reviewing video evidence.
Each driver left the track at turn 2 and did not manage to re-join the track as defined in the Event Notes (v3) 22.1, which stated that:
"Each time any car fails to negotiate Turn 2 by using the track, and who passes to the left of, or has any part of the car over the first orange kerb element prior to the apex, or to the left of the orange apex sausage at Turn 2, must then re-join the track by driving around the array of blocks as indicated by the arrows before the rejoining the track at Turn 3."
Each of the four drivers accepted that they had not followed the instructions and further accepted that in a race there would be a penalty.
The stewards determined that there was no advantage, as the relevant lap time was deleted, furthermore, to be consistent with previous decisions, the stewards considered the precedents set out in Doc. 25 of the 2018 Spanish Grand Prix and Doc. 31 of the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix, subsequently deeming that no further action was warranted.