There was more pain for Alpine as Pierre Gasly was thrown out of the qualifying results for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as the Frenchman’s car exceeded the fuel mass flow during the session.
It was bitterly disappointing for the 2020 Italian Grand Prix winner. He was a brilliant P4 in Q1, outpacing the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
In Q2, he fell back into a more natural spot as he ended up in P13, 0.339s away from advancing. In fact, his time was 0.091s slower in the middle segment compared to Q1.
Lando Norris gains a spot, and he’ll start P16 tomorrow.
Stewards verdict
The Stewards heard from the team representatives of Car 10 (Pierre Gasly), including the Sporting Director and the Engineer involved, and the FIA Technical Delegate along with the FIA Engineers managing the measurements and data from the car.
The driver was summoned to give him the opportunity to provide a defence, but did not attend the hearing.
The Technical Delegate reported that Car 10 exceeded the permitted 100Kg/h fuelmass flow on the final timed lap of Q2.
The team representatives explained that they had an unexpected short duration technical fault that raised the fuel mass flow greater than expected in a transient fashion. The cause was agreed by the FIA technical staff.
That the fuel mass flow was greater than the limit at that moment was not disputed by the competitor. The competitor demonstrated to the Stewards that the technical fault resulted in a slower lap time and that no performance advantage was obtained at that moment.
Thus, they argue, this should be taken into mitigation. They also noted that the greatrarity of breaches of this article demonstrates that this is not part of their strategy and that the scale of the transient simply exceeded the margin they maintain tc prevent a beach.
The usual penalty for a breach of the technical regulations is disqualification and the Stewards note that Article 1.3.3 of the International Sporting Code states “If an Automobile is found not to comply with the applicable technical regulations, it shall be no defence to claim that no performance advantage was obtained.”
In addition to the Code this has long been the position of the International Court of Appeal.
Thus, the Stewards apply the usual penalty and disqualify the car and driver from theclassification of qualifying.
