The stewards have handed Romain Grosjean a 3 place grid penalty for blocking Lando Norris at the beginning of Q1, when Norris was on his attack lap.
The Haas driver was unaware of the fast approaching Norris behind him, until he was informed at the final minute by his engineer. Norris had to avoid a potential collision and take defensive action. This compromised Norris' pace and hence, affected his lap time in the early stages of Q1.
Grosjean has also been given a penalty point, due to which the French driver has now accumulated 8 points in total, just 4 points shy of a race ban.
“The driver of car eight [Grosjean] stated that he was about to commence a push lap when he was overtaken by car five [Sebastian Vettel] and thus slowed significantly to maintain a sufficient gap." said the Stewards in a statement.
“He was not advised by the team of the rapid approach of car four [Norris], which was on a push lap.
"The speed differential was 136 km/h at the point where car four had to take avoiding action.”
The Stewards further added: "[We] accept that the driver of car eight did not intentionally intend to impede,
"However it is the driver’s responsibility to be aware, when travelling abnormally slowly, that faster cars may be approaching.”
While Norris had to considerably slow down to avoid any mishap, he was certainly not happy with what had happened, and expressed his outrage on his radio saying: “Guys, he just blocked me in the final corner. **********”
Romain Grosjean had qualified 8th on the grid for tomorrow's race, two placed ahead of Lando Norris. But his 3 places demotion down the grid has now elevated Kimi Raikkonen, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo to start from 8th, 9th and 10th places respectively.
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