Gasly disqualified and set to start race from back of grid · F1 · RaceFans

Pierre Gasly has been disqualified from the results of today’s qualifying session after his car was found in breach of the technical regulations.

His Alpine exceeded the instantaneous fuel mass flow limit during the session. Teams are not allowed to pump fuel into the engines at a rate of more than 100 kilograms per hour.

The infringement happened during Gasly’s final flying lap in Q2. Gasly was the only Alpine driver to progress beyond the first round of qualifying.

The stewards have allowed Gasly to start the race from the back of the grid. He will join Zhou Guanyu, who has been told he must start at the tail of the field due to exceeding his maximum allocation of power unit parts.

Alpine blamed a technical fault for the rules breach. “The team representatives explained that they had an unexpected short duration technical fault that raised the fuel mass flow greater than expected in a transient fashion,” said the stewards in a statement.

“The cause was agreed by the FIA technical staff. That the fuel mass flow was greater than the limit at that moment was not disputed by the competitor.”

According to Alpine, the rules breach had a negative effect on the performance of Gasly’s car.

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“The competitor demonstrated to the stewards that the technical fault resulted in a slower lap time and that no performance advantage was obtained at that moment,” noted the stewards. “Thus, they argue, this should be taken into mitigation.

“They also noted that the great rarity of breaches of this article demonstrates that this is not part of their strategy, and that the scale of the transient simply exceeded the margin they maintain to prevent a breach.

“The usual penalty for a breach of the technical regulations is disqualification and the stewards note that Article 1.3.3 of the International Sporting Code states ‘If an Automobile is found not to comply with the applicable technical regulations, it shall be no defence to claim that no performance advantage was obtained.’ In addition to the code this has long been the position of the International Court of Appeal.

“Thus, the Stewards apply the usual penalty and disqualify the car and driver from the classification of qualifying.”

Gasly did not attend the hearing. Speaking before the disqualification was announced, Gasly said he had been positively surprised to qualify 13th. “We expected to be 17th and 18th after free practice,” he told the official F1 channel.

“It is obviously a pity that a minor fuel flow infringement means we are disqualified from the session,” he later said. “In any case, we expected to find it tough to reach Q2 as the car has been tricky all weekend, which has shown on the timesheets throughout practice.

“I was very pleased with my laps in qualifying and, even if the result doesn’t look spectacular, it was one of our most complete sessions of the season. The car has been sliding a lot, generally lacking rear grip, and we managed to improve that with some changes. We will have to stay calm in the race tomorrow and aim to be in the mix at the end. It’s usually a tough one here for racing and a lot can happen so we will give it our all from the back.”

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