After a month without activity on the slopes, the Formula 1 has returned with a more than special date, since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix will bring the first sprint race of the season under new regulations. On Wednesday it was announced that the mini-race will have its own classification, which will erase the second free practice from the map, in addition to not including its result on the grid for Sunday.
With both qualy carried out between Friday and Saturday morning, the ultimate motorsport competition He already had the starting grids ready until Alpine made the mistake of modifying his car. And it is that under the conditions of the parc fermé, the vehicles could only have changes until before the classification, but the French team did not pay attention to the regulations of the Formula 1 and worked on Esteban Ocon’s car.
This was reported by the official website of the F1 in the pre-start of this Saturday in a statement indicating that Alpine chose to modify the suspension settings of the A523. These changes are due to what has happened with Pierre Gasly, who had several problems over the weekend that now Otmar Szafnauer wants to avoid Fernando Alonso’s former teammate, although the move was expensive, since the FIA decided to punish him by starting from the pit lane in both the sprint and the race on Sunday.
“The team has taken the #31 car out of parc ferme conditions, which means that Esteban will start today’s sprint race and tomorrow’s Azerbaijan GP from pit lane.
From the bottom of the sprint
The classification of this Saturday should have lasted less than a traditional qualy of Formula 1but SQ2 was postponed due to the accident that Logan Sargeant had, who collided with the famous wall in turn 15. The impact was so strong that the FW45 was left uneven, with only support on two of its four wheels and had to be retired track.
Despite this, the American was going to leave fifteenth position for having passed SQ1 and the British team had a very difficult job to get to repair the vehicle. Of course, that was not finally achieved, as evidenced by the statement on its official networks: “After receiving the FW45 after the shootout, we worked hard on the car, but there is not enough time to complete the repair. We have subsequently withdrawn Logan from the sprint.”