Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen avoided a penalty for throwing a towel from his car during practice but the stewards issued a formal warning to his Red Bull team.
They judged Red Bull had allowed his car to leave their garage in an unsafe condition by leaving a face towel in his cockpit when he headed out to do his qualifying simulation run during second practice.
After discovering the towel Verstappen slowed at the exit of turn three and threw it out on the right-hand side of his cockpit. The towel was still visible on the track towards the end of the one-hour practice session.
The stewards spoke to Verstappen and a team representative. “The driver explained that while in the garage, the face towel had slipped from his lap to the side of the seat and the team was unaware that it remained in the cockpit,” the stewards explained.
“When the driver realised it was there, he moved to the far right of the track and attempted to throw it as far away from the car and the track as possible.
Afterwards the stewards ruled the incident did not deserve a harsh penalty because they felt the towel posed little hazard to others on the track.
“The stewards determine that the towel had the potential to have become lodged in the footwell and to interfere with the driver’s ability to fully control the car and that therefore the car was released in an unsafe condition. The stewards consider this case to be distinguishable from a case where a hard (and therefore potentially dangerous) object is left in the cockpit and to be less severe than such a case. Hence a warning to the team is imposed.”
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Verstappen said it would have been risky not to remove the towel from the car. “I had a towel that you wipe your face with in the car when I went out,” he said. “Instead of it potentially flying in between my feet, which would have been dangerous, I drove off the line and got rid of it in the safest way possible.”
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