Aston Martin did not have a successful Saturday in the stewards’ office at the Shanghai International Circuit.
First Fernando Alonso doubled his penalty points haul for colliding with Carlos Sainz Jnr. Then the team failed in their effort to move their other driver, Lance Stroll, up to 10th on the grid.This case also involved Sainz, and revolved around his crash which brought Q2 to a temporary halt. Sainz was stopped at the track for over a minute before driving off under his own power and resuming the session. He reached Q3 at the expense of Stroll.
Wielding article 39.6 of the Sporting Regulations, which states a “driver whose car stops on the track during the qualifying session… will not be permitted to take any further part”, Aston Martin attempted to have Sainz penalised.
Drivers have been retroactively removed from qualifying stages in the past. At Austria in 2022 Sergio Perez lost all his lap times from Q3 when the stewards ruled he should have had a lap time deleted for a track limits infringement in Q2.
Aston Martin’s case rested on two points. One was that race control themselves had noted Sainz “stopped” during the session in a message on the official timing system. The message appeared 55 seconds after Sainz’s car came to a stop, while it was still stationary. Sainz pulled away 22 seconds later.
However, the stewards said “race control clarified that the language was standard language used in the system and therefore did not convey what Aston was suggesting.”
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Aston Martin’s second argument was that Sainz spent too long stationary to be allowed to resume. The Ferrari sat by the barrier for one minute and 17 seconds.
This change began once F1 cars became able to start themselves. F1 manufacturers gave their power units self-starting capability after the current engine regulations were introduced in 2014.
As a result, drivers are increasingly pulling away under their own steam after lengthy stoppages, as is often seen at the pit lane exit when qualifying sessions begin. This has prompted some debate over whether article 39.6 should be revised.
The stewards’ verdict revealed the teams, F1 and FIA agreed less than 12 months ago to change the rule in order to forbid drivers rejoining sessions after being given outside assistance, as Zhou Guanyu did during qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix last year. But the amendment was never made:
“We were also shown minutes of the Formula One Commission Meeting held in Spa-Belgium on 28th July 2023, where Article 39.6 was specifically discussed. The conclusion reached at that meeting appeared to be, among other things, that: ‘It was agreed to add ‘outside assistance’ to Article 39.6.’
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“We were informed that the above change to Article 39.6 was not in fact made, so we did not rely on these minutes, beyond noting that there appeared to be an agreement at least among those attending that meeting on that day, that was consistent with the approach that Race Control was adopting.”
Here the input from Ferrari’s rivals proved beneficial to their cause. The stewards’ hearing was not only attended by their representatives and Aston Martin’s, but other team managers.
The stewards said “it was clear from the examples cited by a number of the team managers present” that article 39.6 was not intended to be interpreted as meaning that any driver who comes to a stop should not be allowed to take any further part in qualifying.
“The FIA team explained that so long as the car was able to restart and continue from a stopped position within a reasonable time, that would ordinarily be permitted,” the stewards noted. “The typical time would be around 30 seconds, though that varied depending on the circumstances.
“The teams themselves said that they had previously attempted to agree what they considered to be a reasonable length of time before a car would be considered ‘stopped’. Unfortunately, they were not able to come to a final agreement on the maximum time allowed.”
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The stewards “considered examples in Canada, in Monaco and in Baku where cars had ‘stopped’ (and therefore would have been in breach of Article 39.6) but were permitted to continue and take further part in the session, without complaint from the teams.” One example included Alexander Albon’s Williams, which was stationary for around 40 seconds at the Canadian Grand Prix in 2022 “and restarted without complaint from any teams and the
messaging system similarly showed that the car had ‘stopped’.”
Sainz’s stoppage may well represent a new high watermark for how long a car has stopped on a track for and then rejoined a session. But if an upper limit for that is going to be set down, the stewards expect the race director to take that decision.
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Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
20th April 2024, 18:08
It’s not a new high watermark. Lewis Hamilton was stopped for four minutes during the race in the European Grand Prix of 2007, and was permitted to continue the race.
The only meaningful difference between 2007 and now is Article 26.4 adding, “If any mechanical assistance received during a sprint session or the race results in the car re-joining the stewards may disqualify him from that sprint session or the race…” There are a couple of exemptions after the quote, but they’re not relevant here – the point is that the “outside assistance” condition doesn’t apply to any practise session (including qualifying practise). Not only is there no requirement for the stewards to remove Sainz from the session, they couldn’t do it if they wanted to (given that Sainz broke no regulations anywhere else in the book).
notagrumpyfan
20th April 2024, 18:52
Rule 39.6 (or 33 in the old rule book) is specific for qualifying, and determines that drivers cannot take any further part in that session.
The rule is pretty clear.
They might want to dump the rule, but simply ignoring it is not the right thing to do. What’s next.
PS this is the racefans article/discussion about the crash and hoisting during the race.
Great to see that you were actively commenting back then as well. ;)
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
21st April 2024, 6:14
It’s interesting reading a Racefans article from 2007, saddened somewhat by how prophetic the dangers of cranes on the track under yellows came to be.
Also Keith commenting on the unlikely event Lewis would be tied on points with someone come season’s end.
I know it’s difficult to observe things with the power of hindsight fairly. But it seems plenty saw the crane safety problem long before the bad thing happened. Keith not predicting the end of 07′ is probably fair enough.
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
21st April 2024, 6:42
They did not ignore it, they interpreted it and considered it in conjunction with precedent.
They really should make it easy on themselves and state “subject to the final decision of the race director” after every rule in the rulebook. It would be interesting to know if there is such an overriding rule anywhere, which would of course make much of these debates moot.