Bearman penalized after FP3 crash

Oliver Bearman has been given a large penalty for crashing under red flags in FP3 at the British Grand Prix, moving him closer to a race ban.

FP3 was red-flagged due to Gabriel Bortoleto going off at Becketts, damaging his suspension as he did so and getting stuck in the gravel. Bearman was heading for the pit lane when he accelerated to replicate racing speeds and lost control with cold brakes, hitting the barrier and wiping the front wing and nose off his car.

As the incident happened under red flag conditions, the stewards investigated the crash and hit Bearman with a ten-place grid penalty for the British Grand Prix, but also four penalty points on his license that bring him up to a total of eight in the past 12 months.

“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,” the stewards’ decision read. “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.”

Bearman does not lose any penalty points from his license until November 3 – when two will be removed for a collision with Franco Colapinto in Brazil last year – and as such is just four points away from a ban for the next nine races, including this weekend at Silverstone.