Zhou handed grid drop for impeding Verstappen after team’s radio error · RaceFans

Zhou Guanyu has been hit with a three-place grid penalty after the Belgian Grand Prix stewards determined he impeded Max Verstappen in qualifying.

The stewards ruled Zhou’s team failed to give him a sufficiently accurate warning that Verstappen was catching him, but that the driver should have done more to avoid impeding his rival in the high-speed Blanchimont corner.

The pair crossed paths with around five minutes remaining in the first segment of qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps. Zhou had just completed his personal best lap and had backed off on his way to pit for fresh intermediates.

Verstappen behind him was pushing, having set the fastest first sector time of the session up to that point. Despite Verstappen going quickest of all in the first sector, Zhou’s race engineer, Andrea Benisi, misinformed his driver that the Red Bull was “in-phase” with him, indicating the Red Bull driver was also not driving flat-out.

As Zhou continued, he and Benisi continued to discuss set-up adjustments as Verstappen closed on him. Eventually, Verstappen caught to the back of the Sauber through Blanchimont at over 300kph, before Verstappen passed him at the exit.

“Hello? What the fuck?,” Verstappen shouted in frustration over the radio. Zhou returned to the pits and Verstappen completed his lap, setting the best time of the session up to that point.

Zhou said his radio exchange made it clear Benisi had given him the wrong information about Verstappen.

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“If you look my radio it will be quite clear for them,” he told the official F1 channel. “They said Verstappen was ‘in phase’ with me, which means a cool-down lap or out-lap like me, and then in the end he was in a flying lap. I didn’t know, I thought he was in phase.”

Although the stewards recognised the team’s mistake, they handed Zhou a grid penalty as they ruled he should have done more to avoid getting in the Red Bull driver’s way.

“Car 24 [Zhou] stayed on the racing line through turn 17 when car one [Verstappen] was closing in,
despite not going at full racing speed,” the stewards ruled. “Car one [Verstappen] had to lift the throttle for a brief moment before passing car 24.

“The stewards acknowledge that team informed the driver about car one being behind him, but the information given was not accurate enough. However, it is the responsibility of the driver to not unnecessarily impede other drivers.

“The stewards determine that car 24 did unnecessarily impede car one and therefore the standard penalty is applied.”

The penalty makes no material difference to Zhou’s starting position as the Sauber driver had been eliminated slowest in Q1. However, due to a ‘back of the grid’ penalty for Yuki Tsunoda for taking a fifth complete power unit, Zhou will start 19th, where he originally would have prior to the penalty.

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Zhou was also disappointed that his team failed to send him out early enough for his final run in Q1.

“Actually the first set was good,” he said. “The second set we didn’t go out, we stayed in the pit. We were waiting, waiting, waiting.

“When we went, we were at the back of a whole train, no way to warm up my tyres and it was done. So I’m not sure about that, we need to investigate what was going on in the second stint. The time they sent me out was completely wrong, in my opinion.”