Mark Webber faces five-place grid penalty for 2012 Belgian Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing driver Mark Webber will face five-place grid penalty for the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix due to his gearbox change.
Webber has also faced a grid penalty prior to this because of the gearbox change in the German GP as he failed to keep it for five consecutive grands prix. However, the defending champions have again placed a new gearbox in the car of the Australian driver
as a result of which he will start the next race from five places down in the grid for which he will qualify.
It has been stated by a technical delegate of FIA on Friday that Webber’s gearbox change at this point in time doesn’t fulfil the conditions of sport, therefore, he will have to face the penalty.
"[Webber] did finish the last race in Budapest and this gearbox change was before five consecutive Events expired,” said FIA’s technical delegate. Therefore this is not in compliance with Article 28.6a of 2012 F1 Sporting Regulations."
In addition, it will be important to mention that all the contenders faced difficulties during the free Friday practice of the Belgian GP as the rainy weather conditions hampered the running.
Besides, the Aussie said that it is very unfortunate that they could not manage to gather the essential data during the practice sessions due to the rain in order to evaluate their update package.
Nevertheless, he said that they are looking forward to make the necessary preparations so as to do well in the third practice session. He also said that if they want to win the next race then it will be critically important for them to secure a higher grid
slot for the race during the qualifying.
"It's a shame because we love Spa and it would be nice to do some more laps, but in end you can't really learn much in these conditions. We got some info from FP1, but you can't race when there's so much standing water on track and you probably wouldn't
qualify, so in end we just put car to bed tonight and come back tomorrow," he said.
Let’s see how he performs in the qualifying and the race at Spa-Francorchamps.
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