Ollie Bearman has been slapped with a hefty 10-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix for a red flag infringement during second practice.
Red flag infringements often warrant hefty penalties, but Bearman’s earned a particularly sizeable grid drop at Monaco for his faux pas during the red flag period caused by Oscar Piastri nosing his McLaren into the barriers at Sainte Devote.
Having gone through the Swimming Pool section, Bearman overtook the Williams of Carlos Sainz before La Rascasse, but did so after passing signage on his right-hand side that clearly indicated there was a red flag.
Drivers can’t overtake under the red flag and have to reduce their speed and return to the pits in formation.
“Well prior to the overtake, the session had been red-flagged. The team informed the driver rather late, just before the overtake happened,” the stewards’ verdict read.
“However, it is clear from the video footage that there was a light panel directly in front of the driver, which showed the red flag, and the dashboard also indicated the red flag well before the overtake took place.
“The regulations require the drivers to ‘immediately’ reduce speed and proceed slowly back to their respective pits (Article 2.5.4.1 b). The same regulations caution drivers of the fact that in a red flag situation, ‘overtaking is forbidden’ and that drivers should ‘remember that race and service vehicles may be on the track...’
“The driver [Bearman] claimed that he saw the red flags but decided not to slow down abruptly because he felt that slowing down abruptly would have been more dangerous and that what he did was a safer way of handling the situation.
A look at why Ollie Bearman was handed a 10-place grid drop ⬇️
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“We disagreed with his decision not to take steps to slow down sufficiently to avoid overtaking another car and instead proceeding slowly back to the pits, as required.
“The whole purpose of requiring drivers to slow down immediately is for safety – they will not know what is in front of them or the reason for the red flag being shown. This is particularly so in a track like Monaco.
“In the circumstances, there is no mitigating factor for the fact that he overtook a car under red flag, and we therefore imposed a penalty of a 10-grid place drop for the race and two penalty points.”
Those penalty points take Bearman’s tally up to four, the Briton having received two for causing a collision with Franco Colapinto in Brazil last year during his second Haas stand-in appearance.
This Monaco penalty adds to Bearman’s recent red flag anguish. He was knocked out of Q1 at Imola due to a laptime deletion for completing his lap after a red flag was deployed.
This angered Bearman and Haas, who still don’t accept the FIA’s reasoning for why his laptime was deleted.
Bearman was the quicker Haas driver in FP2 at Monaco, 15th and 0.904s adrift of Leclerc’s benchmark.
