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Bottas and Stroll hit with five-place grid penalties for Turn 1 chaos
Valtteri Bottas and Lance Stroll have both been handed five-place grid penalties for the next race for triggering two crashes at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
A poor start saw Bottas drop from second to fifth on the run to Turn 1, but in wet conditions he then misjudged his braking point and ran into the back of Lando Norris ahead of him. That in turn punted Norris into Max Verstappen, while Bottas took out Sergio Perez on the outside of the corner, with only Verstappen able to continue with a heavily damaged car.
At the same time, Stroll outbraked himself and tried to cut to the inside of the track to avoid Esteban Ocon, but only succeeded in wiping out Charles Leclerc at the apex of Turn 1, forcing the Ferrari into retirement and also damaging Daniel Ricciardo’s car.
The stewards took a dim view of both incidents, saying that they “took into consideration the track conditions however the driver of car 77 (Bottas) was fully to blame for the collision (with Norris)” and the same wording was used for Stroll.
With both cars that triggered the crashes out of the race, the stewards handed each of them a five-place grid penalty for the next race at Spa-Francorchamps at the end of August, with the two drivers also picking up a further two penalty points on their license.
Both have also been summoned -- along with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz -- for failing to follow the race director’s instructions during the pre-race procedure, which states they must remove their t-shirts that carry any personal messaging before the national anthem.
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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