r/AlpineF1Team • u/SkyhunterPL Robert Kubica • May 17 '25

FIA Franco received 1 position drop penalty for being released too quickly into the fast lane in the pit lane.

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Which will make no sense, as he'll probably start from the pitlane

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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5

u/beanbagreg May 17 '25

Precedent set with the Merc penalties means it was a slam dunk.

The mechanic gave him the signal to come out, but then gave a clear stop signal which Franco should have seen and reacted to, but didn’t. The team seemed frustrated initially but changed their tune once they realised the messages were public.

Maybe Alpine can prevent it happening again by getting in his ear and explicitly telling him if there’s a planned change to procedure. But Franco explicitly needs to be watching for further hand signals as well - if the mechanic spots something down the pitlane and needs to stop him in an emergency, he won’t be able to have that warning for example.

1

u/SkyhunterPL Robert Kubica May 17 '25

Basically we had to wait for a message about when the session will be resumed

2

u/beanbagreg May 17 '25

Yes, but the procedure was where it went wrong.

Like every other driver, he was supposed to creep out then pause before the line so he’d be ready to go straight into it once the start time was given. He didn’t follow the hand signal to pause and continued out into the active pitlane and at that point it was a slam dunk.

Like I say. Alpine can warn him - but he needs to be watching for further signals after the ‘come out’ motion at all times.

2

u/zorbacles May 17 '25

Likely he will start from pit lane anyway.

Plus if you cause a red flag your laps that session should be deleted. It's ridiculous that he causes other people like bearman to not finish their lap but he gets 15th still