Grosjean escapes penalty after floor stay failure

IMG_0251Romain Grosjean’s car failed a floor deflection test after qualifying in Hungary, but after investigating the matter the FIA Stewards did not give a penalty.

The top three cars were subjected to an “asymmetric front floor RHS deflection test,” and Grosjean’s deflected more than 5mm vertically.

They accepted that the floor stay was broken after a high vertical loading was caused by hitting a kerb at Turn 11. In fact it was deemed to have ranged from -7.3g to + 11.1g.

The stewards also examined an identical part from Kimi Raikkonen’s car and accepted that Grosjean’s had done 600kms, including a race distance.

They stewards thus decreed that “this is deemed to be a case of accidental daamge, not a case of non-compliance.”

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3 responses to “Grosjean escapes penalty after floor stay failure

  1. Wonder how many teams have already started designing stays that break easily under compression & are looking for high curbs to smack them against “accidentally” for the remainder of the season.

    No point having specific technical rules if stewards can ignore them when they wish. May as well say “The floor can only deflect as much as the team can argue to the stewards is reasonable”.

  2. Andreas's avatar Andreas

    I guess the question is whether there’s an advantage to running with that broken floor stay, in which case Lotus should be forced to replace it before the race. And would that mean taking the car out of Parc Fermé (with the associated grid penalty)?

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