United States Grand Prix – Racing Point’s Sergio Perez has been given a penalty for failure to stop at the weighbridge during second practice.
Sergio Perez will start Sunday’s race in Texas from the pitlane, after a breach of weighbridge rules during second practice.
Coming into the pitlane, the Mexican driver received the red light signal that is an instruction from race stewards to proceed directly to the weightbridge to ensure conformity with the weight rules. Instead, Perez drove past the weightbridge and proceeded to do a pitstop. As a result, the team were also summoned before the stewards as a result of them not making any attempt to bring Perez back to the weighbridge immediately.
After a brief enquiry, the stewards have handed out the penalty, saying: “The Stewards reviewed video evidence and heard from the driver of car 11 (Sergio Perez) and the team representative and determined that the driver failed to stop for weighing when required to do so. Instead, he drove on and proceeded to do a pit stop where the car was worked on by lifting the car and all four wheels were changed, in breach of Article 29.1 a). The penalty imposed is a mandatory penalty specified under the Formula One Sporting Regulations and the Stewards note that they have no discretion to impose an alternative penalty.”
Article 29.1 of the Sporting Regulations states: “Any driver who fails to stop when asked to do so, and then fails to bring the car back to the FIA garage, or if work is carried out on the car before it is returned to the FIA garage, will be required to start the race from the pit lane.”
Perez finished practice down in P15, having completed 26 laps with a best time of 1:35.109. He said he struggled with the bumps and the overall lack of grip: “The track conditions today were extremely poor and there were quite a few people having problems with the bumps. I struggled with the balance of the car so I need to try and improve that for tomorrow. Hopefully I can pick it up tomorrow and be in contention for Q3. It’s most important to improve my race pace because that’s where the points are awarded.”
