Martin Brundle says F1 star would have been DISQUALIFIED for British GP incident

Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle has suggested that a British driver would have been disqualified from the entire British Grand Prix weekend after an incident in practice at Silverstone.

During the third and final practice session on Saturday morning, Oliver Bearman crashed on his way into the pits, knocking off his front wing.

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The incident happened during red flag conditions after a crash for Gabriel Bortoleto, prompting stewards to investigate Bearman's pit lane collision for the Brit driving dangerously under red flag conditions.

FIA race stewards later announced a 10-place grid penalty for Bearman, as well as slamming the 20-year-old rookie with four penalty points, the most a driver can receive for one incident.

After a brilliant qualifying performance, Bearman could have been starting Sunday's main event from eighth, but instead started down in 18th.

Ahead of that qualifying session, Brundle told Sky Sports F1 that Bearman's infringement might have led to a disqualification in years gone by.

"There are decades past that you would’ve been sent home for something like that, actually disqualified from the event," Brundle said live on air.

"He wasn’t meaning any harm, but you can’t start trying to test the pit lane entrance flat out when there’s red panels flashing at you and red flags out because you just don’t know what’s round the next corner."

Why was Bearman hit with such a big penalty?

Stewards saw fit to slam Bearman with the maximum four penalty points on his superlicence due to the danger of driving erratically under red flag conditions.

The red flag is only brought out when there is a dangerous hazard on the track, so stewards decided they needed to clamp down on Bearman with the full force of the rules, as set out recently by the FIA's penalty guidelines.

Bearman's first home race in F1 had to be started from near to the back of the grid following the penalty, giving him a tall order to be able to make it into the points.

He also now has eight penalty points, with 12 over a 12-month period being enough for a one-race ban from the sport.

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