At the Singapore Grand Prix, the FIA decided to penalize the winner of the race, Sergio Pérez, with five seconds for leaving a distance of more than ten lengths from a single-seater with respect to the safety car, something that is considered illegal.
However, the international federation took several hours to deliberate the result of the action, which led to the Mexican not being able to comply with the penalty during the test, which would have changed the result of the event because Charles Leclerc had come out ahead at pit stops, as Ferrari director Mattia Binotto acknowledged.
In this way, the Red Bull team was able to celebrate the victory in Marina Bay without problems, despite the anger of the Maranello team with the governing body. The same thing, or something similar, happened at the United States Grand Prix, where the FIA punished Pierre Gasly with five seconds for the same thing during the race dispute, hardly taking long to pass sentence, although that goes further.
In addition to having a different criterion and speed time, the judges did not notice that it was not only the Frenchman who left a distance of more than ten cars with respect to the vehicle in front of him. As can be seen in the onboard cameras of the broadcast, and taking into account that a current Formula 1 car measures about five and a half meters, the penalty would be applied once a 55-meter difference is left, something that many other drivers failed to comply with in addition to Pierre Gasley.
With the new FOM graph indicating the separation between two drivers, it was possible to distinguish that in one of the moments of battle between Charles Leclerc and Sergio Pérez on lap 30, that the distance was 41.2 meters . Taking advertising posters as a reference, it is very easy to see later that, behind the safety car, at the same point, some like Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon or Daniel Ricciardo exceeded that mark and, therefore, also violated the rule.
However, no other participant suffered a penalty, for which the criteria followed by the FIA and its stewards to sanction are once again questioned, to which must be added the controversy that occurred with Fernando Alonso and the protest that came later. of the limit established for it by the Haas team that caused the Spaniard to fall out of the points zone.
In the case of Pierre Gasly, as the punishment was carried out during the race, not like when it happened with Checo Pérez in Singapore, he was forced to comply with the five seconds in his stop and, as if that were not enough, as his team began to touching his car at 4.54 seconds , he was given another more serious penalty, of ten seconds, which sent him from 11th place to 13th , which would have meant getting into the points having applied Fernando Alonso’s penalty.
“The stewards reviewed the video and the positioning tests of the car. It was clear from the tests that car 10 was significantly more than ten lengths behind the car in front,” the FIA communicated in the decision on Pierre Gasly, although what matters most in the matter is not the punishment itself, but that for the future apply the regulations in the same way to all competitors.
Because it was not only the fact that the Frenchman was penalized and the rest not in Austin, but it was done in a completely different way from the appointment in Marina Bay, creating races that are decided by the stewards and in which the drivers never they know what to do to please them.
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