Rain in Canada was a factor in the qualifications. Strategies, accidents and traffic did the rest. In a scenario that turned into real chaos, several drivers met at the end of the session with the commissioners to discuss some episodes. In particular, there were 4 drivers under investigation: Sainz, Stroll, Tsunoda - for impeding and Hulkenberg, for not respecting the red flag regime. Let's look at the decisions that have been made.
Sainz, the first to be penalized
The first communication received from the FIA was the one above Carlos Sainz. The Spaniard was under investigation for a rather obvious impediment on Pierre Gasly. Considering the precedents, there were no doubts about what to do and the 3 position penalties on the grid soon arrived, causing Sainz to drop behind his teammate, Charles Leclerc, who did not make it into Q3.
The other sentences
But Sainz is not the only one to have ended up in the storm. In fact, the results of the other investigations arrived during the night. Both Stroll and Tsunoda like Sainz they received a 3 place penalty for impeding. The Canadian driver - who had stayed on a dry line due to cold tires - was unable to sufficiently justify preventing the other Alpine, that of Esteban Ocon. The team had in fact informed him of Ocon's arrival, and the stewards established that - having known this - he could have reduced his speed on the straight between turns 7 and 8 to allow Ocon's car to pass.
The episode that concerns Yuki Tsunoda instead is that of an impediment, against Hulkenberg. Tsunoda, in the fastest lap he was leading with Hulkenberg who was catching up. Entering Turn 10 Yuki went wide, rejoining the track ahead of the #27 Haas. Tsunoda believed he was still on his fastest lap. Despite the fact that at that moment he was about 3 seconds slower than his previous time. According to the stewards, the Japanese driver should have aborted the lap after the long one, but by not doing so he instead hindered Hulkenberg.
But it didn't go well for Hulkenberg either
The last episode analyzed by the commissioners concerns one of the protagonists of this last scenario, namely Nico Hulkenberg author of a lap that earned him the front row, in a chaotic moment given Piastri's accident that had just occurred. But Haas and Nico's dream did not last long. The stewards gave him a heavy penalty for failing to comply with the red flag regime.
As we read from Valid identity document FIA"The driver had just completed his fastest lap and started another flying lap. He was in sector one when the red flag came out, but by then he was already 1,5 seconds over his delta time” and that for this very reason it would have struggled to go below the delta in the next sector. Furthermore Nico “He also admitted that he got confused by the beep from his headphones, and so at one point thought he was going too slow."
A “light” penalty
Comparing Hulkenberg's telemetry with that of Ocon who respected the delta times in each mini-sector, the stewards found more or less the same speeds and this would have been considered a mitigating factor. However, the stewards, unable to completely ignore the violation, decided to apply a penalty to Hulkenberg, who by regulation it would have been 10 positions on the starting grid, but in Nico's case it was reduced to 3. This hands the front row back to Fernando Alonso who will start alongside Max Verstappen.
