Following the irregularity found on the Drs of his car, Lewis Hamilton is ousted from yesterday’s qualifying for the Brazilian GP and will therefore be required to start from the last position in the Sprint Qualifying. A heavy decision, but predictable and in some ways inevitable.
And therefore Verstappen can rejoice because he will find himself starting in front of everyone in the mini race of 24 laps. The Dutchman, who escaped with a 50,000 euro fine to the “touch” on the Mercedes in a parc fermé, thus has a very big opportunity to give another blow to the world championship fight. The explanation, in a nutshell, was that there was no “movement of any wing element” at the time of the touch, even if it is still an infringement.
Mercedes comes for having infringed article 3.6.3 of the Technician, following the rules of the qualifying place yesterday, when the Drs opened on the W number 44 found an allowed 85 mm. In the long and detailed explanation by the FIA delegates, the good faith of the reigning champions is not questioned, who are recognized not as a deliberate mistake but as an escape from the engineers of the Star manufacturer. It should be emphasized that Lewis Hamilton got the commissioners to consider it unlikely that Verstappen’s touch could have gotten the problem or tampered with the wing measurements in general.
The Englishman will start from the back, and based on the result of Saturday’s race he will be relegated by a further five positions on the grid for tomorrow’s GP due to the use, confirmed yesterday, of the fifth thermal engine.
° BLOG ° Gabriele Romano 