Ocon handed grid penalty for blocking Russell in Q1

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Renault's Esteban Ocon had been handed a three-place grid penalty following an incident that took place in the first round of today's qualifying for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.

Ocon was on an outlap early in the session when he pulled across to pass Antonio Giovinazzi's even slower Alfa Romeo ahead of him on the track.

However that put him into the path of Williams' George Russell who was on a flying lap, creating a dangerous situation. As a result, Russell had to back off, costing him one of his two flying lap attempts.

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"It was no one on track’s fault, but it’s something we should have managed better," Ocon said immediately after the end of qualifying. However Russell's immediate reaction over the team radio was that it had been “properly dangerous”.

The race stewards decided to investigate the incident and reviewed the video evidence and spoke to both Ocon and Russell as well as team representatives from both teams.

“While Russell approached, the team advised Ocon on the radio about Giovinazzi ahead, but didn’t advise about Russell until very late,” the formal statement from the stewards explained.

“As Russell approached the two cars ahead, Ocon pulled to the right to overtake Giovinazzi and clearly impeded the much faster Russell. The team admitted that they did not assist their driver in this instance which led to the impeding."

As a result Ocon was handed a three place grid penalty for tomorrow's race. That takes him down from 11th place to starting from 14th instead.

Sebastian Vettel, Carlos Sainz and Romain Grosjean all get one place promotions as a result. Ironically Russell doesn't get any boost from the decision and will start one place behind Ocon on Sunday.

"It’s a disappointing session overall as I felt my lap in Q2 was pretty good," Ocon said before hearing the verdict of the stewards' investigation.

"The gap to [team mate] Daniel [Ricciardo] was clearly big in that session so we need to investigate why. It could be something we just didn’t understand entirely on the car after yesterday.

The car felt very capable today with a bit more in hand, I just couldn’t carry the speed when I needed to," he added. "[But] last week’s race was good, we had the pace, so hopefully that will be the case tomorrow.”"

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.