Perez drops to P13 for sprint after Q3 times deleted

Sergio Perez has had all his times from the final round of today's qualifying session deleted as well as his fastest Q2 lap, dropping him from fourth to 13th place on the grid for tomorrow's sprint race in Spielberg, Austria.

Many drivers had their times deleted during the session for exceeding track limits. But Perez' final Q2 lap time was allowed to stand despite video footage showing him clearly straying wide at turn 8.

The lap ended up being good enough for sixth place at the end of Q2 meaning the Red Bull driver progressed to the final round in place of AlphaTauri's Pierre Gasly. Without it, he would have missed the cut in 13th.

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The race stewards didn't have time to look into the incident further until after the session. When they did, it was decided that the lap time should be deleted. And because that meant he didn't make the cut, all his Q3 times were deleted too.

"It is disappointing to lose fourth place," Perez commented. the track limits are very tight here this season, but it is frustrating that the Team weren’t told my lap time had been deleted during Q2.

Team principal Christian Horner added: "We feel the penalty for Checo was very harsh and should have been dealt with before Q3 to enable us to improve subsequent performance."

"Perez left the track at Turn 8 on his last flying lap of Q2, just prior to the end of the session," said the official statement from the FIA stewards.

"As this was not identified until the moment before Q3 started, the lap was not deleted prior to the start of Q3 and Perez started Q3.

"This is a consequence of having many situations to examine in each session. The video was clear and there is no doubt of the breach, which the team admitted.

"The team made the point that leaving the track at this point is not a clear advantage and brought data to support that point," the statement continued.

"However, the stewards considered that this was not a case of “gaining a lasting advantage”, but rather is “leaving the track without a justifiable reason”, which is another part of the same rule and which is the section that is being applied to qualifying sessions.

"This situation, where a driver moves through to a subsequent round of qualifying, and then is identified as having committed a track limits breach, does not happen regularly and certainly not recently. Thus the stewards have to examine this as a new situation.

"The team made the point that they took both risk and expended resources to compete in Q3. The stewards accept this point. However, in assessing a penalty after a session, this is no different than any other situation.

"The usual penalty is deleting the lap time concerned, and the stewards order the same penalty here.

"As a consequence the driver would not have proceeded into Q3 and therefore, in fairness to all the other competitors, the stewards order that all the lap times for Q3 for the driver also are deleted."

The deletions mean that Perez will now line up in 13th place on tomorrow's sprint race grid. Mercedes' George Russell will move up to fourth in his stead despite crashing at the final corner in Q3 and triggering a red flag.

Russell also had to visit the stewards after he was seen crossing the still 'live' track to get back to pit lane.

The stewards concluded: "Russell had just crashed in turn 10 and caused a red flag. He then crossed the track on foot and entered the section of the pit lane that does not have a speed limit, without permission from any marshals.

"At the time he started crossing the track, some of the cars were still on track and could possibly have missed the pit entry, causing an unsafe situation. The stewards spoke to the driver and he was issued a warning."

The warning - rather than a formal reprimand - means that Russell hasn't been fined, and has not been handed a grid penalty for tomorrow's race. That is, provided Mercedes can repair his car overnight without engine component changes.

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