10/06/2013
NEWS STORY
The Canadian Grand Prix will be a race that Caterham's Giedo Van der Garde will want to forget as soon as possible.
Having made a "pretty big mistake" during the final moments of Q1 on Saturday that cost him 1.5 seconds, a subsequent yellow flag meant he started Sunday's race from the very back.
Due to a number of incidents during said race, the Dutch youngster appeared to get more time on screen than Sebastian Vettel, thought it usually involved him getting in somebody's way or clashing with someone.
In the most infamous incident, about to be lapped by Webber he somehow managed to collide with the Australian, damaging the endplate on the Australian's left front wing.
"I don’t know what he was doing," said Webber. "We had a lot of blue flags as we approached the hairpin and I rolled to the inside, giving him plenty of space so he knew I was there, but when we got to the apex he tried to hit it; I don’t know what was going on with that."
For this, the stewards handed Van der Garde a 10s stop and go penalty having decided he'd ignored blue flags and then caused a collision, a breach of Article 20.6 and 16.1 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations.
In another curious incident he collided with Nico Hulkenberg going into the final chicane as the German attempted to lap the Caterham.
"Lapping can be troublesome," said the Hulkenberg, "but these guys are racing too and have things happenings in the race, the same as us.
"I lapped Giedo and braked," he added. "At first I didn’t feel anything until I came out of the corner and realised the car wasn’t going straight, so we decided to stop."
"I was heading towards the hairpin with Hulkenberg alongside," said Van der Garde. "I moved over for him but he turned in in front of me in the braking zone and we made contact and that was the end of my race."
However, the stewards saw it differently, ruling that the Caterham driver was given blue flags for a full lap and that Hulkenberg had to use DRS and full KERS in order to overtake a lapped car.
Guilty of an incident as defined by Article 16.1 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations, the Dutchman received a 5-place grid penalty for the British Grand Prix.
"Today wasn’t a good day for me," admitted the Dutchman. "I want to say sorry to Mark for the incident we had and I’ll make sure I learn from the stewards’ decision on the five-place penalty. Sometimes you make mistakes, but the important thing is to accept them, learn from them and move on."
To compound a miserable day for Caterham the team was hit with a 2,000 euro fine after a team member crossed the pitlane as Jean-Eric Vergne was entering, a breach of Article 23.11 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations.
Although Vergne was not impeded there was the potential for the team member to be injured, ruled the stewards.
Check out our Sunday gallery, here.