Baku Crash Costs Colapinto Five Grid Places

Race stewards, the officials who rule on on-track incidents, found Alpine's Franco Colapinto "wholly or predominantly to blame" for a crash at the restart after a Safety Car period on Lap 36 of 51 in Baku that took out teammate Pierre Gasly and McLaren's Lando Norris. Because he did not finish, they converted his 10-second time penalty into a five-place grid penalty: he will start five places lower than he qualifies at next weekend's race (Formula1.com; FIA stewards). That race is the Bahrain Grand Prix, which will be raced at Malaysia's Sepang International Circuit on 2⁠–⁠4 October after the April race in Bahrain was cancelled (Formula 1; FIA). The April race was called off because of the conflict in the Middle East, and when that conflict continued, Formula 1, the FIA and the governments of Bahrain and Malaysia agreed to move the race to Sepang. Bahrain is paying most of the cost, so it keeps the Bahrain name and is officially called the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia (Formula 1; FIA; Reuters; Sky Sports). In Baku, Colapinto braked too late into Turn 1, locked his wheels and hit Gasly, and Gasly hit Norris; all three retired (Formula1.com). George Russell won the race, 0.196 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen (Formula1.com). "Just a big sorry … [I] did a big mistake," Colapinto said. Norris said: "I just got taken out" (Formula1.com).