Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas was handed a three-place grid penalty and accused of "dangerous driving" by stewards after a spin in pit lane during practice for the Styrian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The Finn narrowly avoided a collision with the pit wall following a change to hard tyres, with McLaren mechanics helping him straighten up and leave the area.<\/p>\n
McLaren also reported the incident and took aim at the driver: "Absolutely ridiculous… he could have taken our guys out".<\/p>\n
Bottas was having a tough day on the track and clocked the twelfth fastest time and was then handed a three-place grid drop for Sunday's race by stewards, along with two penalty points on his licence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
"When [Bottas] pulled away from his designated pitstop position, he lost control of the car when he turned into the fast lane," said the stewards in their ruling.<\/p>\n
"He oversteered, spun and came to a stop across the fast lane near the McLaren pits.<\/p>\n
"During the hearing [Bottas] stated that in the past they have been losing time in the pit departure. So they tried something new, which was to leave in second gear.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/bernardi1909_\/status\/1408588948096663562?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a>https:\/\/twitter.com\/ausgrandprix\/status\/1408577640869416967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a><\/p>\n "As a result, the wheel spin was much higher and the result unexpected. Therefore he didn't manage to control the car properly into the fast lane.<\/p>\n "This has to be considered as potentially dangerous driving, especially as personnel were around in the pit lane."<\/p>\n Championship leader Max Verstappen was quickest in both practice sessions in his Red Bull but Daniel Ricciardo wasn't far behind.<\/p>\n The Australian recorded the second-quickest lap of Practice 2 for McLaren to sit just behind former teammate Verstappen on the timing sheets.<\/p>\n He was just 0.336secs off the pace after finishing 12th in P1 in what was easily his best performance of the year in his McLaren.<\/p>\n "Definitely!" said Ricciardo, when asked if he was encouraged by his form in practice. "It feels alright\u2026 I know it's only Friday but for sure, I'd rather be in the top three than 10th saying we've got a lot of work to do tonight. So I think we do a bit of fine-tuning, but we're certainly not lost. Far from lost actually, so I think we're in a good place.<\/p>\n "Obviously low fuel pace was good this afternoon. I think we definitely picked something up from the morning. The high fuel, probably a little more to find relative to low fuel but definitely a productive afternoon."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas was handed a three-place grid penalty and accused of "dangerous driving" by stewards after a spin in pit lane during practice […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91045,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91043\/revisions\/91045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}