Hours before tempers flared between F1's front-runners, things got out of hand in the junior ranks when Haas development driver Santino Ferrucci lost his cool in F2 and earned himself a four-race ban.
In Sunday morning's sprint race, Ferrucci forced at one point his Trident team mate Arjun Maini off the road. But for some odd reason, the young American driver failed to rest his case after the chequered flag and deliberately hit the right-rear of Maini's car on the cool-down lap!
Ferrucci's reckless attitude and maneuver, the details of which were all caught on camera, did not impress the Silverstone stewards who duly processed the case and handed the Haas junior a four-race ban for deliberately crashing into his team mate.
But wait, there's more!
Ferrucci was also fined 66,000 euros for refusing to attend the stewards' hearings and for driving the car with a mobile phone in his hand!
Apparently, the American was seen driving from the support paddock to the pitlane "wearing just one glove and holding a phone in his hand", a state of affairs that "violated both the technical and sporting regulations for incorrect driver safety equipment and the prohibition of wireless transmission devices within the car."
Obviously, Ferrucci also had his name deleted from Sunday's F2 race results.
His Trident team took to Twitter to apologize for its driver's "unsportsmanlike and above all uncivilized behaviour".
"The contractual implications of what has happened will be dealt with by our lawyers. Never in these 12 years of sporting activity has anything even close to this ever occurred," added the message.
Suffice to say, Ferrucci's F1 development role with Haas will also likely hit the skids…
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