Franco Colapinto handed one-place grid penalty following Qualifying rule breach in Imola

Franco Colapinto has been handed a one-place grid penalty at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix following a rule breach during Saturday’s Qualifying session.

After a red flag was thrown during Q1 following a crash for Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda, Colapinto entered the fast lane of the pit lane before the session restart time had been confirmed.

The stewards subsequently investigated the issue and – after hearing from Colapinto and an Alpine team representative – it was acknowledged that the breach was inadvertent following a misunderstanding in communication.

However, they also felt that a sporting penalty was required and opted to impose a one-place grid penalty, mirroring the incident that occurred for both Mercedes cars during Qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

With Colapinto ending the session in P15 – despite suffering a crash towards the end of Q1 that put him out of the running – this will demote the Argentinian to P16 as he continues his first weekend back on the F1 grid.

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A document released from the stewards’ hearing reads: “The team representative stated that he gave the instruction for the car to creep out but not be fully released.

“The driver misunderstood the instruction and entered the fast lane before the re-start time was officially confirmed in breach of the Race Director’s event notes. Once this was done, it was too late to reverse course and the team instructed the driver to proceed down the pit lane.

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“The team argued that there was no sporting advantage gained in this case as there was sufficient time remaining for other teams to perform their run plans as this was the start of the session. The team representative and the driver apologised for the inadvertent breach.

“The stewards consider that this breach was inadvertent but it did require a sporting penalty to be imposed. However as the breach was unintentional and this did not result in any sporting advantage, we decided to impose a one position grid penalty.

“A similar breach in different circumstances, could entail a more severe sporting penalty, in future.”