Jack Doohan has been penalised for his role in the crash which eliminated himself and Logan Sargeant from the Formula 2 Sprint race in Saudi Arabia.
Doohan had been relegated to the rear of the field following qualifying after officials could not extract the required 0.8L of fuel from his car.
His weekend was then compounded when, as the field lined up for a restart, the Australian accelerated out of the final corner, tagging Sargeant.
The incident immediately triggered another Safety Car, under which race leader Dennis Hauger mistakenly entered the pit lane following an instruction from his team.
That would later be penalised by a 10-second stop-go, with Prema subsequently appealing the result of the race. Having heard that protest post-race, Stewards dismissed it.
Doohan was also luckless with his visit to the Stewards, which resulted in a three-place grid penalty for the next race and the addition of a penalty point on his licence.
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“The Stewards examined video and GPS evidence. They summoned and heard the drivers and team representatives,” the Stewards report noted.
“Having considered the matter extensively, the Stewards determined that as the field came through Turn 27 and exited onto the main straight, the rear of the field suddenly bunched up as drivers who had accelerated anticipating a start found the leader maintaining speed and were forced to slow down.
“Car 6 [Sargeant] pulled to the left to avoid the cars in front. Car 3 [Doohan] did the same, but there were no open gaps at that point and he almost unavoidably ran into the back of the Car 6. Car 3 is judged predominantly to blame for the collision.
“The blind nature of the exit of Turn 27, which only allowed drivers to see 2 or 3 cars ahead complicated their task during the restart.
“The penalty point assigned is reduced from the those normally assigned due to the difficult position the driver of Car 3 found himself in.”
Doohan’s incident, and Hauger’s decision to head to the pit lane (as was initially instructed before being corrected on official timing screens) left Calan Williams out front.
The West Aussie was muscled aside and ultimately fell to fifth by the chequered flag.
However, post-race, that improved to fourth when Jake Hughes was excluded from second place.
The Van Amersfoort Racing driver was disqualified for a technical non-conformity on his car after the blank on its underside was found to have worn more than the allowable amount.
“The Stewards received a report from the Technical Delegate regarding the nonconformance of Car 24 to the FIA Formula 2 Technical Regulations,” Stewards noted of that report.
“Car 24’s skid plank was found to have a maximum thickness of 3.6mm, where the Technical Regulations require the thickness to be 5mm +/-1mm.
“The Stewards heard from the Team representatives who explained that wear on the plank was on the loaded side of the car, and this was likely to be due to variations in tyre pressures during the multiple safety car deployments that occurred.
“Having considered the matter extensively, the Stewards determined that Car 24 did not comply with the Technical Regulations and is therefore disqualified from the results of the Sprint Race.
“The Stewards understand the circumstances that the team explained, and view the matter a resulting from an unfortunate error on the part of the Team and not due to intent.”
Ralph Boschong also received a penalty after he was assessed to have started the race outside his grid box.
He was handed a post-race time penalty of 20 seconds and two penalty points on his licence.
The official classification for the Formula 2 Sprint race in Saudi Arabia therefore has Liam Lawson winning from Juri Vips, Felipe Drugovich and Williams.
Boschong’s penalty dropped him to 15th, one spot up from Hauger who fell well back as a result of his pit lane faux pas.
Meanwhile Amaury Cordeel, who crashed to trigger the initial Safety Car in the Sprint race, is a scratching for the Feature encounter.
Van Amersfoort Racing confirmed the damage to the Belgian’s car was too substantial to be repaired in time.
The Formula 2 Feature race gets underway at 16:35 local time (00:35 AEDT this evening).
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