Mercedes will face no penalty regardless of the stewards discovering some workforce personnel didn’t put on required protecting gear whereas attending to Lewis Hamilton’s automobile within the pits.
The stewards discovered nearly each different workforce had dedicated the same infraction and determined punishing all of them “wouldn’t serve a helpful function.”
The infringement occured when Hamilton got here into the pits throughout SQ2. “The stewards heard from the workforce consultant and reviewed video proof and decided that workforce personnel carried out work on automobile 44 [Hamilton’s] entrance wing whereas it was in its pit cease place in the course of the dash qualifying session, and weren’t sporting the required protecting gear.”
This was in breach of F1’s laws which specify what sort of helmets the pit crew should put on, and likewise state that “the usage of acceptable eye safety is obligatory.”
“Nonetheless, as we have been analyzing the conduct of the workforce in relation to this infringement (which was reported to us by race management), it got here to our consideration that a lot of different groups had engaged in comparable work with out helmets and/or with out eye safety in the course of the session both throughout the pit cease place or in shut proximity to it,” the stewards famous.
“Actually, people who have been engaged on the automobile throughout the pit cease positions would even have been in breach of Article 34.13 (for instance by touching the automobile or jacking up the automobile). Certainly, these barely exterior of their pit cease place could not been in breach of the above article however the distinction, from a security perspective (which is the probably function for this rule), was not apparent to us.
“Moreover, it seems to be the established apply to jack the automobile up, whereas blowers are used to chill the brakes, throughout the pit cease place to convey the automobile again into the storage. That too, learn strictly, may very well be in breach of the above laws. So, in these circumstances, penalising one workforce, the place all or almost all of the groups could probably have been in breach of this text in some kind or the opposite wouldn’t serve a helpful function.”
The stewards subsequently took no motion towards Mercedes or some other workforce for this breach, however urged the FIA to “think about whether or not modifications must be made to both the present practices throughout qualifying/dprint qualifying or the laws themselves.”
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