Pierre Gasly questions FIA stewards’ decision not to penalise Lando Norris after Singapore crash

“We’ve got stewards for that. They made up their minds. Whatever the ref says, the ref is right,” said Alpine’s Pierre Gasly of the decision not to penalise Lando Norris for his collision with Oscar Piastri on the final lap of the sprint race in Singapore.

This is the coded language footballers and football managers typically use when they disagree with the referee.

The McLarens were running fourth and fifth behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who was beginning to struggle as his intermediate-compound tyres degraded, when Norris launched up the inside line into Turn 5. Norris was fully committed as Piastri took up his line and the cars collided, spinning Piastri into the barrier. Norris recovered to finish eighth, ahead of Gasly.

Norris was duly investigated by the stewards but the collision was deemed a racing incident by the stewards in a bulletin released during qualifying, some three hours afterwards. Naturally, Gasly has a vested interest in questioning the decision, since he would have scored a point if Norris had been penalised, but at the beginning of this triple-header Gasly’s team-mate Franco Colapinto was punished for an incident in Azerbaijan.

Colapinto locked up at the first corner in Baku as the race restarted after a safety car deployment, hitting Gasly, who then cannoned into Norris. The crash took both Alpines out of the points and, since Colapinto then had to retire, when the stewards deemed him at fault for ‘causing a collision’ what would have been a time penalty was converted into a grid drop for the following event.

While Alpine boss Flavio Briatore was furious with Colapinto after the crash, suggesting the Argentine driver could face internal sanctions, subsequent analysis of the data revealed Colapinto had only braked in the order of 3% harder than usual at that corner.

At the same safety car restart, the Racing Bulls of Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad were running 12th and 14th, with Esteban Ocon’s Haas between them. In trying to pass both, Lindblad got caught between them and tagged his team-mate into a spin, putting a hole in Lawson’s floor. The stewards elected not to penalise Lindblad, saying the collision was caused by “the restricted space available to [Lindblad] and the chain reaction caused by the incident ahead.”

But afterwards Lawson took a dim view, saying, “Obviously I’m not going to go and protest my team-mate, but… I don’t understand it, because I got hit so hard that it put a hole in my floor.”

The stewards’ document explaining the no-further-action decision on Norris read: “The driver of Car 81 explained that he had not expected Car 1 to attempt an overtake and, after turning in, noticed Car 1 on the inside and attempted to leave space.

“The driver of Car 1 said that he saw an opportunity to overtake. He said that the front axle of his car was ahead of the mirror of Car 81 prior to the apex and therefore expected to be left space. As he approached the apex, the space was less than he had anticipated so he had to use the inside kerb and braked and a collision occurred.

“The Stewards considered that both drivers had contributed to the incident and that neither driver was wholly or predominantly to blame for the collision. Therefore, the Stewards determined to take no further action.”

Drivers often lament the consistency of stewarding decisions but in this case, Gasly was open that he would have something to gain if Norris had been punished for causing the collision.

“I would have scored a point if Lando would have been penalised,” he said.

“You should not really crash in your teammate. I’m not going to go down that route, I don’t know.

“It’s another two collisions between teammates. There’s no further investigation. I’m sure we’ll discuss that with the stewards.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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