Bearman hit with 10-place grid penalty for red flag overtake

Oliver Bearman’s Monaco Grand Prix weekend has been made significantly harder as he has been handed a 10-place grid penalty for overtaking under red flags.

The red flag was required on two occasions in FP2, with the second seeing Oscar Piastri going into the barrier at Sainte Devote – the first corner – and damaging the front of his car. Although Piastri got moving again, the session was halted and during that time Bearman overtook Carlos Sainz before returning to the pits.

The stewards investigated the situation and felt the Haas driver had ample time to respond to the red flag, as well as having all visual cues from his dash and light panels available to him, and did not have a justification for passing the Williams.

More Formula 1

Brown says Horner F1 return would be a positive, more A-B teams not so much

What the revised Formula 1 regulations are predicted to achieve in Miami

Piastri says Verstappen departure would be ‘not a great look’ but Norris thinks he’ll stay

“Well prior to the overtake, the session had been red flagged,” the stewards explained. “The team informed the driver rather late, just before the overtake happened. However, it is clear from the video footage that there was a light panel directly in front of the driver which showed the red flag; and the dashboard also indicated the red flag well before the overtake took place.

“The regulations require the drivers to ‘immediately’ reduce speed and proceed slowly back to their respective pits (Article 2.5.4.1 b)). The same regulations caution drivers of the fact that in a red flag situation, ‘overtaking is forbidden’ and that drivers should ‘remember that race and service vehicles may be on the track…’

“The driver claimed that he saw the red flags but decided not to slow down abruptly because he felt that slowing down abruptly would have been more dangerous and that what he did was a safer way of handling the situation.

“We disagreed with his decision to not take steps to slow down sufficiently to avoid overtaking another car and instead proceeding slowly back to the pits, as required.

“The whole purpose of requiring drivers to slow down immediately is for safety – they will not know what is in front of them or the reason for the red flag being shown. This is particularly so in a track like Monaco.”

As well as handing Bearman the severe grid drop of 10 positions  – particularly costly on a circuit where overtaking is so difficult – the stewards have also given the rookie two penalty points on his license.