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ESPN staff
Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi will both drop three places down the grid at the Monaco Grand Prix after blocking other drivers in qualifying.
Gasly prompted a colourful radio rant from fellow Frenchman Romain Grosjean after he impeded the Haas driver in Q2, the second qualifying session, preventing him from setting a time good enough to progress to the top ten shootout in the process. Gasly had been moving slowly on a preparation lap when Grosjean approached his car at Turn 4.
Grosjean said the fault was probably Red Bull’s, rather than Gasly’s, for not communicating properly with its driver.
“It’s got big, big consequences for me,” he said. “I could have been in Q2 but obviously I’m P13. Red Bull must have f—ed up that one, Pierre couldn’t do anything.”
Although the stewards acknowledged that was true, Gasly will drop from fifth on the grid to eighth.
The stewards’ verdict said: “The driver of car 8 had to brake hard to avoid colliding with car 10 which was going slowly on a preparation lap, and was on the race line. At the time car 8 was clearly the only car on a fast lap in the area, and while the Stewards accepted that it was unlikely that the driver of car 10 had any opportunity in that sequence of turns to see car 8, the team admitted that they had failed to give any warning.
“The Stewards therefore determined that car 10 unnecessarily impeded car 8 and imposed a three grid place penalty and consistent with past practice imposed one penalty point.”
Giovinazzi will drop from 15th to 18th after dawdling through the final sequence of corners during the opening qualifying session, hampering Nico Hulkenberg while the Renault driver was on a quick lap. As with the Gasly incident, this was put down to poor communication from his team about where other cars were on the circuit.
On that incident, the stewards said: The driver of car 99 was between turn 16 and turn 18 when he was warne exceptionally late that car 27 was behind him. At the time he was in the middle of the track and clearly impeded car 27.
“The Stewards considered that as the driver of car 99 was on a setup lap, he had the opportunity to give more room regardless of whether he received a warning from the team. Further the team had the opportunity to give a better warning. The Stewards therefore determined that the impeding was unnecessary, and ordered a three grid place drop, consistent with past practice. One penalty point was assessed.”