Formula 2: Four drivers received penalties

      Yesterday's Formula 2 qualifying was stopped several times with red flags because of crashes caused by different drivers, for which penalties were issued.

      First, Amory Cordila had his best time deleted – the stewards ruled that the Rodin Motorsport driver's mistake in Turn 13, which forced marshals to repair the track barriers, was the sole cause of the red flags. Several drivers had to abort their attempts as a result – therefore the incident for which the Belgian was held responsible was treated as a breach of Article 33.5 of the Formula 2 Sporting Regulations.

      Although after that stewards' verdict Cordila's result was worse than the 107 per cent limit calculated from the pole time, he was allowed to start both weekend races. But, of course, he will start them from the back.

      Second, Victor Marten, driving for ART, was also stripped of his best time set in the Friday session – he had finished qualifying fourth. Despite all his experience, the 24-year-old Frenchman lost control of his car in Turn 3, which also caused red flags, and he too was deemed to have breached the same article of the sporting regulations as Cordila.

      As a result Marten was moved down to 13th in the classification and will start both weekend races from that position.

      The incident caused by Roman Stanek had more serious consequences for the Czech Invicta Racing driver. He went off at Turn 1, and when returning to the track he collided with John Bennett's Van Amersfoort Racing car, after which the session was stopped with red flags and not restarted.

      Not only was his best qualifying time deleted — i.e. he was moved from ninth to twelfth — but he will also lose five places for both races of the Baku weekend and will start 17th.

      The fourth driver to be penalized was Joshua Duerksen, the Paraguayan AIX Racing driver. Having gone off track, he also rejoined in an unsafe manner and impeded Laurens van Hoepen, a debutant for Trident. But the stewards considered as a mitigating factor that this occurred in a yellow-flag zone and therefore speeds were not very high, so Duerksen lost only one grid place, although the standard penalty in such cases is three places. As a result, he will start 15th in both races.