Rosberg keeps win after yellow flag reprimand

2013 British Grand Prix

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Nico Rosberg has avoided a penalty for going too quickly under yellow flags during the British Grand Prix.

The stewards gave the race winner a reprimand after ruling they “found no evidence of a significant reduction in speed” whileyellow flags were displayed between turns three and five. It is Rosberg’s first reprimand of the season.

Both Mercedes drivers received reprimands during the course of the weekend, Lewis Hamilton collecting one during practice for not passing the pit lane entry bollard on the correct side.

Jules Bianchi received a reprimand on Saturday for failing to stop at the weighbridge during qualifying. Lotus were reprimanded earlier in the weekend for unsafely releasing Kimi Raikkonen’s car.

2013 British Grand Prix

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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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50 comments on “Rosberg keeps win after yellow flag reprimand”

  1. If this happened during the race would they still just reprimand the driver?

    1. Its subjective

    2. Was thinking the same. I think it’s a case of it doesn’t matter what the crime was, just give him a punishment that causes minimal impact considering it was a couple of hours after the race.
      In other words, similar to the “make it up as you go along” penalty :)

    3. I don’t understand your question: This did happen during the race and they did reprimand him.

      1. The decision Kieth… C’mon.

      2. He meant if the investigation took place during the race, what would the punishment be then? Drive-through perhaps…

        1. @valentino I don’t think it would have made a difference to the punishment.

          Post-race time penalties are issued in lieu of drive-through penalties, which obviously can’t be issued after the chequered flag has dropped. But reprimands are just reprimands: I don’t see what alternative was available to them before the end of the race if this is the severity of penalty they were aiming for.

          1. @keithcollentine
            I think they are suggesting that FIA is unwilling to make a decision which would change the winner of the race afterwards, unless the infringement is so clear that they have no option. There are some examples of them doing that though, such as the notorious 2008 Spa.

          2. I meant @keithcollantine , sorry for mistyping your name.

  2. Observation: There have been investigations after both of Nico’s wins this season, and both results have stood.

    1. Not only have the results stood but the Merc team conspired to deliberately break the testing rules with little penalty to show for it. One has to wonder if they shouldn’t re-name the series the The Formula Mercedes World Championship. Seems that Merc owns F1 these days ..

      1. Well, that’s good. God used to be on the side of Ferrari (for a long time) then he appears in Vettel’s garage so it’s good to see God on the side of a new team for a change. Mercedes mechanics have a new belt and the buckle reads “Gott mit uns” on it.

  3. What is it with Mercedes and the word reprimand. Like peas in a pod. In the Dictionary when you look up reprimand, it should have a picture of a Mercedes F1 car.

    1. Brawn has always been one to go for the edge of the rules. Not exactly breaking the rules, but not exactly in the “spirit” (or literal interpretation) of the rules either.

      Nico as well in these situations. This is not the first time that he was speeding under SC conditions. Remember him blaming a poorly functioning dashboard before.

    2. how many reprimands before a real penalty for this team… disgusting. i cant beleive F1 even has “reprimand” as a penalty. reprimand means NOTHING, you can have unlimited reprimands. pathetic system for a sport on the world stage, and pathetic for world class labels like Merc to be able to get away with sporting laws day in and day out.

      1. Wasn’t it 3 reprimands in a season before a harder penalty is issued?

        1. @patrickl For a driver, yes, not a team.

    3. I think Mercedes should have been dragged over the coals for their illegal test. The mere fact that they only received a reprimand is a bloody joke!

      However, in this situation, I struggle to see why he even got a reprimand.

      If I remember correctly, he was only about 1 – 1.5 seconds behind Vettel at the time. By the time the marshals would have had the flags out, Rosberg should have been at the very least along side Vettel, if not already past.

      As far as I can work out, Rosberg should have been past the ‘danger’ before the flags even came out.

  4. Wow! Isn’t there a fixed penalty for this?!? Drive-through or 10 seconds penalty, depending on whether it was during or after the race that the penalty is applied.

  5. I like Rosberg, but this is not OK at all. What if this was Brasil? And he won the WDC?
    Its absurd…

    1. I see what you did there ;)

    2. To be fair, there is video evidence from Brazil that shows Vettel did nothing wrong. Shame, I wish he had.

    3. They did investigate, and there was nothing wrong.

      1. Theres nothing wrong with going purple under yellows?

  6. Massa and Vettel got drive-through penalties last year at the Spanish GP for using DRS under yellow flags.
    Surely disobeying yellow flags is worse than pressing a button on the steering wheel?

    1. Actually no, using DRS means the car is unstable because the rear downforce is removed. So apply the brakes and it will spin off. That sounds a lot more dangerous than simply not slowing down enough.

  7. What do the rules say ? A reprimand should be given or penalty ?

  8. What do you expect guys from the stewards ,to hand Rosberg’s win to Mark Webber no way !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    BTW they have been softer this year even in this weekend to be honest i expected Alonso to serve a penalty for an unsafe release when Grosjean was coming & he was leaving the pit (thanks heaven he looked into his mirror) and also Adrian Sutil for some unfair blocking when he was racing Ricciardo

    1. Alonso did not deserve a penalty, because he was intelligent enough to look in his mirror when he was released. He showed how to solve this kind of situations and waited for the incoming car to pass. It cost him several seconds in doing so, but he managed to keep the situation safe.

  9. The Stewards and FIA have been abysmal this season

  10. Traverse (@)
    30th June 2013, 18:01

    I’m a Mercedes fan (surprise surprise) but still, he should get a harsher punishment for this. Yellow flags are there for a reason, usually because stewards are on or near the race track, so disobeying them is not okay. The next time a driver does this they’ll have to be consistent and only reprimand the driver, rather than a enforcing a time penalty.

  11. What is the point of having yellow flags if you can just ignore them? What example are the setting for the junior categories? So if your leading the championship and in the final race there is a a Yellow flag you can ignore them if you haven’t racked up previous reprimands…

    What a Joke.

  12. I am torn by a bunch of things in this race.
    I don´t really want to see either Alonso, or Rosberg penalised, or the result of this (or any race for that matter) changed.

    However, at the last race we had a race marshal die. And at this race we have one or two very obvious unsafe releases, and people ignoring yellow flags. And the Stewards do effectively nothing.

    All of this in a race where we had multiple tyre delaminations, which in themselves also could have caused injury to the drivers in the cars that had the issue and others around them.

    A race where an awareness of safety should have been on people´s minds as a matter of course.

    1. Imagine if one of those tyres hit a drivers head. With metal banding. that could be a killer.

      1. It did: Raikonnen got a lot of Vergne’s exploding tire into his cockpit. Luckily, it had disintegrated enough to not cause any damage (though Raikonnen seemed rattled for a moment).

  13. Curious to hear more of where the flag was and where Rosberg drove fast really. Most of the penalties for this have been drive-through penalties, so there must be a very good reason for being more lenient on Rosberg here.

    1. If he was a rookie in a back of the pack team and didn’t win the race id say they would have stung him…

    2. Usually, there’s a drive-through for overtaking or using DRS, I haven’t seen many (any?) for not reducing speed enough.

      And it’s clear why: Overtaking means two-cars wide, DRS means almost impossible to avoid anything.

  14. I am not sure if I am the only one to get this feeling, but I feel when it comes to qualifying infringements, the stewards are pretty harsh even on the pole winners, but when it comes to race winners, the stewards go really soft.

  15. Instead of stripping NR from the race win, which most of us, including myself don’t want – why don’t FIA just hand him a grid drop for the next race, to actually punish him for disobeying yellow flags?

  16. According to Adam Cooper it was not just yellows but double waved yellows and Rosberg set a purple sector. As has been said this is about the safety of Marshals… we shouldn’t allow them to be put in any more danger than necessary.

  17. Question: (apologies if its a naive one) … At the last SC ROS was running less than 20 seconds ahead of RAI. ROS pitted, RAI did not. Yet ROS held P1. How? Did RAI slow down too much? Or ROS run too quick? (I appreciate it wouldn’t have changed the final outcome)

    1. Two factors at play I think. Firstly, the drivers will likely to have been driving to a “delta” or target time and therefore slower therefore lessening the effect of going through the pits.

      Secondly, due to the configuration of the pit entry missing the final slow corner sequence, the commentators were saying that the loss in time by going through the pitlane was only in the region of 15 seconds as opposed to the usual 20-30 seconds. Hope this helps and that I am accurate in my assessment.

      1. Thanks, that makes sense. Often wonder how rigidly drivers stick to delta times under SC.

    2. More importantly, in the area between Nico and Kimi when the information about SC came out helped Nico, since he drove that phase at maximum possible speed, Kimi had to drive delta.

  18. Interesting, Ferrari obviously got away with the potentially unsafe release of Alonso. It was borderline to be fair.

  19. I think a 0.8 second race time penalty was in order here….

    1. Haha! Brilliant.

  20. I’m getting sick of the race stewards leaving investigations until after the race then being too scared to change the outcome. One look at the purple sector time on the timing screen and one radio conversation with the flag marshal to confirm that the flags were indeed being shown and job done. The investigation would take less than a lap to sort out.

    The stewards should be making every effort to investigate and rule on every incident before the end of the race (unless the drivers involved retire from the race) so the guilty drivers can serve any punishments in the race they committed the offence in.

  21. IF, as has been stated, he posted 3 purple sectors under yellow flags then he should have been heavily punished.

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