FIA announce MASSIVE punishment for F1 star at British Grand Prix

Photo: © IMAGO

British Grand Prix

FIA announce MASSIVE punishment for F1 star at British Grand Prix

A F1 star crashed at Silverstone

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Saturday 5 July 2025 15:19 Updated: 16:17

The FIA have announced a huge penalty for F1 star Ollie Bearman after a crash at the end of FP3 at Silverstone.

A late red flag was called in the session after Gabriel Bortoleto crashed his Sauber, and on his return to the pits Bearman hurtled into the barriers where he destroyed the front wing of his Haas.

The British driver entered the pit lane rather too eagerly, which caused him to slide and crash into the barriers, whilst also having detrimental consequences to his British Grand Prix weekend.

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The FIA have announced that Bearman will receive a 10-place grid penalty for the incident and a huge tally of four penalty points have been added to his super licence, rocketing his total up to eight.

Bearman joins Kimi Antonelli with his grid drop, after the Italian procured a three-place grid penalty for Silverstone following his crash into Max Verstappen at the Austrian GP.

Why has Ollie Bearman received a penalty for the British GP?

Ollie Bearman suffers disappointment at home

In an official statement the stewards confirmed the reason for the penalty, and said: “The session was red flagged at 12.33:57. Car 87 had slowed down for the red flag and as he was approaching Turn 15 accelerated significantly to race pace and entered the pit entry road at 260kph.

“He lost control of the car in the pit entry road and crashed into the barriers. Art. 37.6 (a) of the Formula One Sporting Regulations and Art. 2.5.4.1 (b) of Appendix H of the International Sporting Code require that when a red flag is shown ‘all cars must immediately reduce speed and proceed slowly back to the pit lane’.

“It is beyond doubt that the driver of Car 87 did not proceed slowly back to the pit lane when he accelerated to simulate entering into the pit entry road under race conditions.

“In fact, we looked at a previous in-lap under normal racing conditions and found that he was faster in this lap, under a red flag. To make matters worse, he lost control of the car and crashed into the barriers while at speed.

“The driver informed us that he misjudged the fact that his brakes were not warm because the lap was done slowly, due to the red flag. While this may have been a factor contributing to the crash, we did not consider it to be a mitigating factor.

“We accordingly penalised him per the penalty guidelines to a drop of 10 grid places with 4 penalty points.”

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