Romain Grosjean, Haas, Red Bull Ring, 2020

Grosjean spared disqualification after Haas break parc ferme rules

2020 Styrian Grand Prix

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Romain Grosjean will be allowed to start the Styrian Grand Prix from the pit lane after his Haas team was found to have broken Formula 1’s parc ferme rules.

Breaking these rules, which forbids set-up changes to cars between qualifying the race, can lead to disqualification. However the stewards granted the Haas team an exception due to the “mitigating circumstances” involved.

“The team did not stop working on the car three hours [and] 30 minutes after the end of qualifying (11th July 2020, 20:16 hrs),” as required by the rules, the stewards noted, “but instead continued to work on the car until 23:20 hrs on 11 July 2020.” This is a breach of the sporting regulations, as is the fact “the work carried out during this time was not under supervision of a scrutineer”, the stewards added.

“In general, a breach of parc Ferme regulations could lead to the driver being disqualified from the event. For work carried out on the car in the time windows until three hours 30 minutes after the end of qualifying and after five hours 10 minutes before the start of the formation lap that includes changes to the set-up of the car or modifying parts of the car, a start from the pit lane would be mandatory.

“In this particular case the stewards accept that there clearly are mitigating circumstances as team would not have been able to run the car in the race without breaking the regulations and they approached the stewards before the start of the relevant time period.

“In this connection is it pointed out that the penalty applied is not to be seen as a precedent for future infringements of the regulations set out in Art. 36 of the 2020 Formula 1 sporting regulations.”

Updated 2020 Styrian Grand Pric grid

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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2 comments on “Grosjean spared disqualification after Haas break parc ferme rules”

  1. I think they should scrap the parc-ferme rules from the start of qualifying & allow teams to have a full qualifying setup & then change to a race setup. If the setup of the cars has to be the same over both then why should we expect any real variance in performance between qualifying & the race?

    Prior to the parc-ferme rules been introduced in 2003 (Primarily to stop teams producing qualifying cars for single lap qualifying) we used to see a bit more variance in performance between qualifying & races, Especially in the days before refueling when the car performance difference between qualifying & races was larger.

    1. @stefmeister part of the reason was because that then puts a heavier workload onto the mechanics, with the older mechanics who do remember the pre-2003 situation commenting that they are relieved that they’re not as heavily overworked as they were back then.

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