19/06/2014
NEWS STORY
The Stewards at this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix are to review the penalty meted out to Sergio Perez in Canada two weeks ago.
The move follows an official request from Force India which is understood to involve "new elements" that have emerged since the Montreal event.
Perez was handed a five-place penalty for the incident which saw Felipe Massa crash into the back of the Mexican and almost taking out Sebastian Vettel who went on to finish third.
While both Perez and Massa blamed one another, and most pundits and fans saw the incident as 50/50, the decision to solely penalise the Mexican was met with widespread disbelief, not least from the driver and his team.
Though most thought the accident was due to an over exuberant move by Massa, who was on fresher rubber and had previously been 'released' by his Williams teammate thereby allowing him to mount a late assault on the leaders, the Stewards, having heard from the Race Director, the drivers, team representatives and examined video evidence, ruled that Perez "changed his racing line which caused the impact with car 19 (Massa) in Turn 1", an incident as defined by Article 16.1 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations. The Mexican was subsequently handed a five place grid penalty
In the days that followed both drivers and their teams continued to argue the toss on Twitter. "I watched several replays of the incident and I can't help but notice how Felipe turns right just before he hits me" said Perez, according to his team. "If someone thinks you can keep two Red Bulls behind for as long as we did with so-called 'terminal' problems, they are clearly misguided."
This referred to the claim from Williams that the Mexican had a terminal brake issue. However, whilst Force India admitted there was an issue, it insisted Perez had been able to do a reset which solved it.
The Stewards in Austria will review the incident on Friday and decide whether it merits further investigation. If it does both drivers will need to attend the official review later in the day.
Check out our Thursday gallery, here.
Chris Balfe