Oliver Bearman slapped with 10-place grid drop for F1 Monaco GP

Oliver Bearman has been hit with a 10-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix after overtaking Carlos Sainz under red flag conditions during second practice.

The Haas Formula 1 rookie overtook the Williams driver at La Rascasse after the session was red-flagged early on for Oscar Piastri’s crash at Sainte Devote. 

According to an FIA report, Haas informed Bearman “rather late” and “just before the overtake happened”, but video footage showed a light panel directly in front of him at the time.

“The dashboard also indicated the red flag well before the overtake took place,” the report added.

“The regulations require the drivers to ‘immediately’ reduce speed and proceed slowly back to their respective pits. The same regulations caution drivers of the fact that in a red flag situation, ‘overtaking is forbidden’ and that drivers should ‘remember that race and service vehicles may be on the track’.

“The driver claimed that he saw the red flags but decided not to slow down abruptly because he felt that slowing down abruptly would have been more dangerous and that what he did was a safer way of handling the situation.

“We disagreed with his decision to not take steps to slow down sufficiently to avoid overtaking another car and instead proceeding slowly back to the pits, as required.

“The whole purpose of requiring drivers to slow down immediately is for safety – they will not know what is in front of them or the reason for the red flag being shown. This is particularly so in a track like Monaco.

“In the circumstances, there is no mitigating factor for the fact that he overtook a car under a red flag and we therefore imposed a penalty of a 10 grid place drop for the Race and 2 penalty points.”

It comes after Bearman had finished 15th in both Friday practice sessions, causing the 20-year-old to admit it was a “tough” day but was positive for the rest of the weekend.  

“We did a good step with the car from FP1 to FP2 and I was pretty happy with the balance,” Bearman told F1TV.

“We tried to short run the medium and see how its performance was across one lap and it seemed pretty robust.

“We need to see where we stand because I did my performance laps on medium, which was quite different to some of the others. I think there’s some good signs from today and let’s hope to build on them and improve tomorrow.”