Bearman hit with ten-place grid penalty for crashing under red flags

Local driver Oliver Bearman has been handed a ten-place grid drop penalty for crashing having ignored red flags in the third and final practice session at the British Grand Prix.

The Haas driver lost control of his F1 car and hit the wall on the entry into the pitlane in the closing stages of the final practice while pitting for a red flag brought out by Gabriel Bortoleto's accident.

The Brazilian suffered a snap through the Maggotts and Becketts corners and ended up in the gravel with broken suspension which immediately brought out the red flags.

Heading back to the pits, Bearman had a spin of his own and hit the barriers, losing the front wing from his VF-25 in the process. With the incident happening under red flag conditions, the stewards elected to investigate the matter.

After the investigation, the stewards elected to hand a ten-place grid penalty to the Ferrari Academy driver while he has also received four penalty point on his driver licence.

The stewards' statement 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 session 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."