Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – McLaren have finished P3 in the Constructor’s Championship, as the stewards have not penalised Carlos Sainz for a pitlane transgression.
McLaren have secured third place in the Constructor’s Championship, after a post-race investigation into Carlos Sainz resulted in no penalty.
Lando Norris finished in P5, with Sainz in P6, in the race at Yas Marina. McLaren scored enough points to pass Racing Point in the Championship, with the pink team only managing a solitary point as Sergio Perez retired and Lance Stroll only managed P10.
However, the situation remained fluid, as Sainz came under investigation during the race for slowing coming into the pits during the Safety Car period. Backing up cars behind coming into the pits is against the rules, and the stewards opted to investigate the issue after the race. A penalty could have resulted in Racing Point still securing P3.
Sainz was alleged to have slowed Lance Stroll down coming into the pits, with Racing Point’s Otmar Szafnauer telling Sky: “He slowed and you’re not allowed to do that. He went slowly so they could stack them. And what it cost was Lance getting out ahead of him. And now it’s completely changed the race and you’re not allowed to do that.”
Stroll himself told Sky that the delay caused by the McLaren ‘didn’t really cost us that much’.
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The stewards have since cleared Sainz of any wrong-doing, but did say the Spaniard was briefly below the pitlane speed limit.
“Car 55 [Sainz] was advised by its team, that it was 2.4 seconds in front of car 18 [Stroll] approaching the Pit Entry,” the stewards explained. “There was no instruction by the Team to slow down. On approaching the start of the pit lane car 55 accelerated then as per normal practice, braked briefly to less than 80 km/h just prior to the line and then accelerated up to 80. This was exactly the same as car five [Sebastian Vettel]. (Car 18 also braked to below 80 prior to the line then accelerated up to 80 as it crossed the line).”
“Within the pit lane, car 55 was at 80 kph for all but approximately five seconds when it dropped to no less than 70 kph. We estimate this resulted in car 55 arriving at the pit stop around 0.6 second later than if it had maintained a speed of 80 kph.
“Therefore, we are not of the view that this action in any way resulted in the team avoiding a “double stack” situation as car five was well clear of the pit stop at this time. We also accept the explanation of the driver of car 55 that he was exercising a degree of caution as video evidence confirms the presence of a lot of other teams’ personnel in the pit lane at the time.”
“Car 18 was able to maintain a speed of 80 kph in the pit lane except for a very short period of time (approximately 1 second) and therefore we do not consider that it was materially impacted by the actions of the driver of car 55.”
“We also checked the relative speeds of the cars after leaving their pit stops and can see no evidence of car 55 driving unnecessarily slowly.”
