Oliver Bearman has received a 10-place grid penalty ahead of qualifying for this weekend’s Formula 1 British Grand Prix after crashing in the pitlane late in the final free practice session.
The Haas driver, who is making his first appearance as an F1 in front of his home crowd, spun whilst entering the pits with just minutes of FP3 remaining.
It appeared that Bearman was driving into the pits at an unusually fast speed after the session was halted by a red flag.
And the bizarre incident was compounded for Bearman by damaging the front of his car, nudging the barrier, which truncated the spin.
After finishing FP3 in sixth place, the incident is even more disappointing for Bearman, as his one-lap pace looked impressive, with qualifying fast approaching.
Not only will he be forced to start 10 places lower than his qualifying position, but has also been served with four penalty points on his licence, taking his total to eight, another four from a one-race ban.
The FIA stewards’ report said: “Car 87 [Bearman] 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.”
The report concluded: “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.”
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