FIA stewards issues Oliver Bearman verdict having been tipped to ‘come down hard’

Oliver Bearman has been handed a 10-place grid penalty and a hefty four penalty points for his failure to comply with a red flag during FP3 for the British GP.

That punishment on top of the damage his VF-25 suffered when the Haas driver attacked the pit entry under reds, and crashed his VF-25.

Oliver Bearman has a 10-place grid penalty

Bearman had an incident-packed final 10 minutes in Saturday’s final practice for the British Grand Prix.

Up in sixth place on the timesheet, the Briton lost a piece of bodywork off his Haas which brought out the first red flag of the session.

Back underway, it wasn’t long before the second red flag was shown as Gabriel Bortoleto crashed his Sauber.

The Brazilian driver had a moment through Maggotts and went spinning, with his suspension breaking on the kerbs and the driver ending up in the gravel with his front left hanging on by its tether.

Bortoleto reported: “I’m okay, but the suspension is broken.”

That sent the drivers out on track back into the pits under red flag conditions.

Bearman, however, attacked the pit entry and lost control of his Haas, hitting the barriers and sheering off his car’s front wing and nose.

“Oh my god! Someone just crashed in the pit entrance! Whohaha, what!” said Max Verstappen who was behind him at the time.

Bearman blamed cold brakes, but the FIA could take a dim view of his antics with the driver noted by race control for a red flag infringement.

Former F1 driver Anthony Davidson, speaking before the FIA’s verdict, believed Bearman would be in a lot of trouble.

“At the time it was under red flags, you can see clearly,” he said in the Sky F1 broadcast.

“The drivers are fully aware that they should be sticking to a very slow speed and not pushing the pit lane entry necessarily, which is exactly what Bearman was doing.

“The speed he’s carrying in and that’s why it’s enough energy to just lock the rear momentarily. And that’s what’s sent the car spinning around.

“So drivers following him into the pit lane there, now they’re compromised.

“It’s obviously the red flags out there for safety and you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘is that the safest thing to be doing under red flag?’

“I think the stewards might come down on him pretty hard for this one.”

The FIA stewards ruling

They did just that, handing the driver a 10-place grid penalty as well as four penalty points on his Super Licence.

The ruling read: “The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 87 (Oliver Bearman), the team representative and reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.

“The race was red flagged at 12.33:57. 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 260kph. He lost control of the car in the pit entry road and crashed into the barriers.

“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 pit lane’.

“It is beyond doubt that the driver of Car 87 did not proceed slowly back to the pit lane 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.

“We accordingly penalised him per the penalty guidelines to a drop of 10 grid places with 4 penalty points.”

Read next: British GP: Leclerc’s P1 but questions remain about Hamilton after FP3 red flags