Ghiotto and King penalty decisions revised

Two penalty decisions have been revised following today’s FIA Formula 2 Feature Race, with Luca Ghiotto and Jordan King now only receiving written reprimands, instead of time penalties.

It was alleged that both drivers committed an infringement during the start of the Safety Car procedure and did not comply with the minimum time set by the ECU.

It had been determined during the race that both cars had driven more than a second below the minimum ECU delta time in marshalling sectors 7 and 8. Both were handed five-second time penalties, which left Ghiotto in 6th and King in 7th.

However, in a post-race hearing, the stewards discussed the incident in detail with the two drivers and examined footage from the MP Motorsport car. They found the situation to be relatively unique, as four cars had been running in a tight pack in a high-speed area prior to the incident. There was oil on the track from the incident that brought out the safety car.

The stewards found that it would have been quite difficult, if not almost impossible, to slow down quickly enough without potentially causing a major incident. As such, in the interest of fairness, the stewards found the normal five-second penalty to be inappropriate and have removed it.

This puts Ghiotto back to 4th and King up to 6th. Sérgio Sette Câmara now finishes 5th, with Nobuharu Matsushita in 7th.