The Monegasque driver had been singled out for the FIA’s routine and random weight check towards the end of Q2, but he didn’t see the sign and didn’t stop.
If he had entered the Ferrari garage and the mechanics had touched the car, even if it was just to change the tyres, that would have been enough to receive a penalty for breaking the regulations.
However, Ferrari quickly realized that Charles Leclerc had been called in for weigh-in and immediately ordered the Monegasque to stop. The mechanics ran through the pitlane to push him back and drag him to the control area.
Leclerc confessed that he stopped thanks to his team’s warnings, since he had not seen the stop sign, and admitted that in reality he did not even know where he was.
“It’s very tricky here because we get into the pits and I don’t really even know where the panel is, whether it’s on the left or the right,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com. “But it’s too far away, too far right or far left, so you don’t look in that direction.”
“Actually, I didn’t see anything. But luckily for me, the team saw the alarm and told me to stop and they pushed me back. It wasn’t the best thing to be in the same condition as everyone else after that, but ok We came out of this difficult situation well.”
Formula 1 rules in this regard are quite strict when it comes to drivers not obeying the weigh-in call and teams working on such cars.
At the 2019 Baku Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly had to start from the pitlane after skipping a weight check in one of the practices, while the same thing happened to Sergio Pérez at that year’s United States Grand Prix.
The regulations are clear about skipping the FIA weigh-in:
Article 35.1 b) states: “Any driver who fails to stop when asked to do so, and then fails to bring the car back to the FIA garage, or carry out any work on the car before it is brought to the FIA garage, it will be forwarded to the stewards.
The regulations state that the penalties for such a violation can be quite severe.
“In case of non-compliance with these calls for the weigh-in of cars, the stewards may sanction the driver with the number of positions on the grid that they consider appropriate or even disqualify him from a session,” he says.
Leclerc ‘s action is not the first time it has happened, with the drivers being saved by warnings from their teams, which prevent them from receiving a serious penalty for breaking the regulations.
Monaco ‘s complicated pitlane layout also makes it difficult for drivers to see the weigh-in call sign. For example, Leclerc, Sergio Pérez and Nico Hulkenberg already missed it in 2019.
In these similar circumstances, the incidents were quickly detected by their teams and the drivers were transferred back to the FIA garage, which is located just after entering the pitlane, to complete the check before carrying out any work on the car.
