Oliver Bearman has been hit with a 10-place grid penalty for the British Grand Prix, as well as four penalty points. The home hero was deemed guilty of a red flag infringement by the stewards during the final practice session at Silverstone on Saturday.
The red flags waved during the final minutes of FP3 after Sauber driver Gabriel Bortoleto, fresh from his heroics at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend, suffered a spin at the high-speed Maggotts corner, breaking the front-left suspension and sending him into the gravel trap. While the red flags were waving, Bearman attempted to attack the pit entry, likely in an attempt to gauge his references for Sunday’s race. In doing so, his cold brakes locked, and he suffered a spin, destroying the front wing of his Haas machine.
Bearman’s spin caught the attention of four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who was entering the pit lane afterwards and was forced to take avoiding action to prevent a shard of Haas front wing from going underneath his RB21. The Dutchman found the incident amusing, giggling to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase on the radio.
Unfortunately for the 20-year-old, the stewards deemed it less amusing than Verstappen did. After an FIA review ahead of qualifying, Bearman was hit with a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race, and four penalty points for his license, takiing his 12-month tally to eight.
“The race was red flagged at 12.33:57,” the stewards explained. “Car 87 had slowed down for the red flag and, as he was approaching Turn 15, accelerated significantly to race pace and entered the pit entry road at 260km/h. He lost control of the car in the pit entry road and crashed into the barriers.
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“Art. 37.6 (a) of the Formula One Sporting Regulations and Art. 2.5.4.1(b) of Appendix H of the International Sporting Code require that when a red flag is shown ‘all cars must immediately reduce speed and proceed slowly back to the pitlane’.
“It is beyond doubt that the driver of Car 87 did not proceed slowly back to the pitlane when he accelerated to simulate entering into the pit entry road under race conditions. In fact, we looked at a previous in-lap under normal racing conditions and found that he was faster in this lap, under a red flag.
“To make matters worse, he lost control of the car and crashed into the barriers while at speed. The driver informed us that he misjudged the fact that his brakes were not warm because the lap was done slowly, due to the red flag. While this may have been a factor contributing to the crash, we did not consider it to be a mitigating factor.”