The FIA has apologised for the error which meant that Alex Albon wrongly failed to make it out of Q1.
Shortly after Q3 got underway, it was noted that Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli had had their times deleted for exceeding track limits, however the names of Nico Hulkenberg and Alex Albon also appeared even though the German had been eliminated in Q2 and the Thai driver in Q1.
The stewards reported that during Q1, Hulkenberg had "clearly exceeded track limits in Turn 11", however this was not reported to them until Q2 had commenced.
The Stake driver's time on the lap that the track limits were exceeded, was sufficient to place him in Q2. However at the time the stewards were informed that Hulkenberg had breached the rules and his time deleted he was already on track in Q2.
As this was an unusual situation, the stewards decided to settle the matter by exercising their authority under Article 11.9.2.a of the FIA International Sporting Code, and deleted Hulkenberg's time of 1:31.998 recorded in Q1 and all his times in Q2. The move dropped the German to 16th, and while Albon was 'promoted' to 15th he never got the chance to qualify higher.
The FIA subsequently issued a rare apology.
"There are a number of track limit hot spots which are monitored continuously live," said the sport's governing body in a statement. "Track limit hot spots are given precedence.
"Based on previous sessions, Turn 11 was not deemed to be an area of focus for track limits. In hindsight, it should have been higher on our priority list as a corner.
"Checks in areas of the circuit such as Turn 11 take a bit longer than those of a high priority. Unfortunately, in this case due to the timing of the check it was not possible to act before the start of Q2. As soon as we became aware of the incident, we acted on it.
"We are building towards increased resources and improved systems and processes.
"On this occasion, we got it wrong."
Quite whether this will appease Albon we don't know, but with the resources the sport and its governing body enjoy it should never have happened, and once again indicates that under its current management the FIA is focussing on the wrong things.
"First of all, it's frustrating, because Q1 is ever-so tight now," James Vowles told Sirius XM after the session, "you can see cars do three runs, the cars that are slightly better do two, that's where we were.
"We didn't get the best lap with Alex," he admitted, "but it was a top 10 car today."
"Some of the laps, you can see from the FIA, they were very quick to respond on... Verstappen, Tsunoda," he continued, "and typically their timeline should be seconds after it happens.
"Good question on why this one wasn't because the impact is: brilliant, he's moved behind us, but that's of no bearing to the fact that we're probably six to eight places out of position, and that hasn't been corrected, and it won't be corrected either for tomorrow.
"The FIA have expanded their operations to Geneva," said Vowles. "I'm sure that there's a lot that they're having to look at, and in many regards we should be thankful that they looked back at a lap that happened 30 minutes prior. But we need to understand from them what can be done better in this circumstance, because the impact isn't one position anymore, it's quite significant.
"We saw that his lap, from the onboard, which is all that we have available to us, was marginal," he continued. "We don't swamp the FIA with messages because to do so would make their life more difficult; we trust that they are going through the process as we were, and the situation.
"That's one of the discussions I want to have with them. Perhaps there's a reason behind this that will make a lot more sense, and if there is then we can all put it to bed and move on."
sign in