Mercedes cleared over Hamilton pit stop infraction as ‘nearly all teams in breach’

Mercedes will face no penalty despite the stewards finding some team personnel did not wear required protective gear while attending to Lewis Hamilton’s car in the pits.

The stewards found almost every other team had committed a similar infraction and decided punishing all of them “would not serve a useful purpose.”

The infringement occured when Hamilton came into the pits during SQ2. “The stewards heard from the team representative and reviewed video evidence and determined that team personnel carried out work on car 44 [Hamilton’s] front wing while it was in its pit stop position during the sprint qualifying session, and were not wearing the required protective gear.”

This was in breach of F1’s regulations which specify what type of helmets the pit crew must wear, and also state that “the use of appropriate eye protection is compulsory.”

“However, as we were examining the conduct of the team in relation to this infringement (which was reported to us by race control), it came to our attention that a number of other teams had engaged in similar work without helmets and/or without eye protection during the session either within the pit stop position or in close proximity to it,” the stewards noted.

“Certainly, those that were working on the car within the pit stop positions would also have been in breach of Article 34.13 (for example by touching the car or jacking up the car). Indeed, those slightly outside of their pit stop position may not been in breach of the above article but the distinction, from a safety perspective (which is the likely purpose for this rule), was not obvious to us.

“Furthermore, it appears to be the established practice to jack the car up, while blowers are used to cool the brakes, within the pit stop position to bring the car back into the garage. That too, read strictly, could be in breach of the above regulations. So, in these circumstances, penalising one team, where all or nearly all the teams may potentially have been in breach of this article in some form or the other would not serve a useful purpose.”

The stewards therefore took no action against Mercedes or any other team for this breach, but urged the FIA to “consider whether changes need to be made to either the current practices during qualifying/dprint qualifying or the regulations themselves.”

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