Jack Doohan has collected the first penalty points of his Formula 1 career for a last-lap crash in today’s sprint race.
The Alpine driver lunged down the inside of Gabriel Bortoleto at turn 14 and made contact with the Sauber driver. The stewards ruled him wholly responsible for the incident.
“I think he locked up and hit me,” said Bortoleto after the race. Doohan said he “went for a move, it didn’t exactly go to plan, I need to look into it and see what happened.”
The stewards spoke to both drivers before issuing the penalty. Doohan told them the Haas cars ahead when he tried to pass Doohan compromised his attempt to overtake. The stewards did not accept his explanation and held him responsible.
“[Doohan] attempted to overtake [Bortoleto] on the inside of turn 14 but locked up at the apex of
the corner and collided with Bortoleto,” they noted. “Doohan suggested that he was in control of the
overtake but the presence of the two Haas cars and the line they took compromised his overtake attempt.
“First, as the car attempting to overtake, the responsibility was on Doohan to ensure that it was done in a safe manner and in line with the regulations and the guidelines.
“Secondly, applying the Driving Standards Guidelines, Doohan did not have the right to the corner at the apex and should have backed off – here, because of the speed at which he approached the corner for the overtake and the resulting lockup and understeer, a collision was caused, for which Doohan was predominantly to blame. We therefore imposed the standard 10-second penalty with two penalty points.”
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The stewards also explained why they chose not to penalise Doohan or Liam Lawson for a minor collision between the pair at the same corner earlier in the race.
“Car 30 [Lawson] overtook car seven [Doohan] at turn 14 and there was a minor collision at the exit.” they noted.
“We applied the Driving Standards Guidelines as a guide to determine who had the right to the corner. Applying those guidelines, it is clear that Lawson was well ahead of Doohan at the apex of the corner and was entitled to use the full track at the exit.
“Doohan should therefore have given Lawson sufficient room to overtake and his failure to do so resulted in a minor collision. As the resulting collision was minor, we took no further action.”
This article will be updated.
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