19/09/2009
NEWS STORY
Michael Herck has been disqualified from today's feature race results in Portimao, while a number of other drivers have been handed penalties by the race stewards as a result of incidents arising during this afternoon's event.
Irregularities we discovered in scrutineering on Herck's car after he finished in a career best sixth position: further measurements were made in the presence of the team manager, who accepted that the car was too low and therefore not in compliance with the regulations.
Herck was subsequently excluded from the results, but will be permitted to start tomorrow's sprint race from the rear of the grid. As a result of the exclusion Kamui Kobayashi is promoted to sixth place, Davide Valsecchi moves up to seventh, and Andreas Zuber fills the final point scoring position and
tomorrow's pole.
Herck was also judged to have cut the second corner at the start of the race, along with Ricardo Teixiera, Davide Rigon and Jerome d'Ambrosio. The Trident teammates were given 25 second time penalties, with Rigon dropping from ninth to fourteenth place, one ahead of Teixiera, while Herck received
the same penalty but had it superseded by the exclusion.
D'Ambrosio will lose five spots on tomorrow's grid as he did not finish today's race. Giedo van der Garde was also handed a penalty for cutting the corner, in his case after the restart, and failing to give back the position: as he did not finish the race, the Dutchman will also lose five spots on tomorrow's grid.