Aston Martin protested the qualifying result in Shanghai after Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz rejoined Q2 after going off track.
Sainz was stationary for 77 seconds after hitting the wall on the exit of the final corner, but the Spaniard managed to get going again and advanced to Q3 at the expense of Aston driver Lance Stroll.
With its driver eliminated, Aston decided to protest the results based on article 39.6 of the F1 sporting regulations, which states that “any driver whose car stops on the track during the qualifying session or the sprint penalty shootout will not be allowed to take the wheel.” any other part of this session.
The stewards rejected the protest as it was clear from previous instances that the rule only applied to cars that joined a qualifying session after receiving outside assistance from stewards or recovery vehicles, while Sainz continued by its own means.
But the incident reignited a discussion about tidying up the regulations, as it had previously been agreed that the element of external assistance should be added to 39.6, although the amendment was not incorporated into the sporting regulations 2024.
“It’s just about clarifying things and ultimately there’s a lot of discussion with the stewards and you have to respect the decisions they’ve come to,” explained Tom McCullough, Aston Martin’s performance director.
“But I hope everything will be sorted out and less ambiguous in the future, because it’s pretty clearly stated in the messaging system that the car stopped.”
“This article says that this car should not participate further in qualifying. So this will be fixed in the future.”
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur acknowledged that explicit clarification was welcome to avoid further confusion, pointing out that F1’s sporting regulations have become increasingly complex.
“I don’t know if it’s clear, but we certainly need to understand what happened,” Vasseur said.
“We asked the race director if we could go again, he said yes, and that was the end of the story. You have to define the situation exactly.
“But what is true is that the regulations are more and more complicated. When I started this job, the sports regulations were 20 pages long, today they are 75.
“We are all trying to find a loophole and the regulations are now more and more complicated, but on this one we will find an easy clarification.”
McCullough revealed Aston’s long-serving sporting director Andy Stevenson immediately blew the whistle on a possible rules violation once Sainz’s car stopped on the track.
“Andy sits next to me on the pit wall and he knows the rules inside out, he’s like an encyclopedia. He’s been here so long,” McCullough said.
“As soon as it appeared on the official messaging system that a car had stopped, he said – bang – ‘Article 39.6, he can’t [rejoin].’
“We were a little surprised, that’s why [we protested]”.
