FIA race director Charlie Whiting has explained why Nico Hulkenberg avoided the same punishment that Romain Grosjean received despite the pair causing similar crashes at the start of recent Belgian GP’s.
The Renault driver misjudged his braking point for La Source hairpin on Sunday, ploughing into the back of Fernando Alonso’s McLaren and sending it over the top of Charles Leclerc’s Sauber, with the Halo deflecting a flailing front-right tyre away from the Monegasque’s head.
It brought back many flashbacks to Grosjean’s incident back in 2012 when he too went too deep into Spa’s first corner and went flying over the front of Alonso’s then-Ferrari, narrowly avoiding the Spaniard’s helmet.
After that race, the Frenchman was banned for the Italian Grand Prix while Hulkenberg only has a 10-place grid drop for Monza, however, it is the penalty points system that was born in the wake of Grosjean’s actions that worked in the German’s favour.
“When you go back to the Grosjean accident, I think he had four different incidents [that year],” Whiting explained.
“The idea was that if he’d had those accidents and each had attracted three [penalty] points, then we would be quite justified to ban him for a race.
“That was the way that it was made 12 points, so in the future, if that sort of thing happened, that would be the result.”
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Hulkenberg though is not yet on the cusp of reaching that total, despite the three penalty points he picked up in Belgium and that is why he can take to the track this weekend in Italy.
“[Sunday’s crash] was clearly Nico’s fault, he said he was completely to blame for it, and he took three, arguably four cars out, or destroyed their races,” Whiting continued.
“I think the points are exactly right, and the 10-place grid penalty is pretty much what he expected, he didn’t say too much after it, apparently.”
The role Halo played in the accident was highly-praised with even some of the staunchest critics accepting situations such as that at Spa justify its introduction.
A new 360-degree video from Leclerc’s car was also uploaded to Twitter which shed light on just how important the cockpit device was.
Immediately after the race though, the FIA director did hold some judgement.
“A little early to say,” he said. “The high-speed camera won’t tell us an awful lot, the onboard camera that we’ve seen so far is not particularly clear.
“I think it would be a little bit speculative, but you can see it doesn’t take much imagination to think that the tyre marks could have actually been on Charles’ head.
“It would have been a bit of a miracle if they weren’t had the Halo not been there. There’s a huge extent of the tyre marks, as you’ve all seen I’m sure.
“So it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think that that probably would have made contact with his head. But it is slightly speculative.”
