02/10/2022
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez has been penalised for a Safety Car infringement during today's Singapore Grand Prix but keeps the win.
Initially it was thought the Mexican was under investigation for one infringement but in fact there were two separate incidents.
The first was on Lap 10, when the Mexican admits that while the lights of the safety car were still on, he failed to keep within 10 car lengths of the safety car between the exit of turn 13 and turn 14.
When questioned, Perez said that the conditions were very wet and that it was very difficult to closely follow the safety car with little heat in his tyres and brakes.
Although the track was wet in parts, the stewards did not accept that the conditions were such as to make it impossible or dangerous for the Mexican to have maintained the required gap.
Nevertheless, they took into account the wet conditions and the difficulties highlighted by the Red Bull driver as mitigatory circumstances and accordingly determined that a reprimand ought to be imposed.
On lap 36, and still leading during the second safety car period, Perez once again failed to keep within 10 car lengths of the safety car between turn 13 and turn 14.
This occurred notwithstanding the fact that the Race Director had issued a warning to Red Bull that the Mexican was not respecting the less than 10 car lengths regulation between turns 9 and 10, the warning having been passed on to the driver.
As this was the second breach of Article 55.10 - which requires that the leader must keep within 10 car lengths of the safety car once deployed until the lights are extinguished - and followed an express warning from the Race Director, the stewards deemed to impose a 5 second time penalty on Perez.
With the Mexican having finished 7.595 seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc, this means he keeps the win.
In addition to the time penalty, Perez was handed two penalty points bringing his (12 month) total to 2.
"There was a bit of miscommunication with the safety car I think," said Perez, "he was going really fast in places where I couldn't keep up with him and then slowing where I could go fast.
"We were driving on slicks in the wet trying to keep the temperature and that is difficult. When they told me I was under investigation I just pushed like qualifying for 15 laps to get as big a gap as possible to Charles."
The penalty was confirmed almost three hours after the end of the race.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Singapore here.