Montoya's Black Flag

By Andrew Hooper
June 21 2004

   
Montoya's Black Flag
 
Despite having run fifty seven laps of the United States Grand Prix BMW WilliamsF1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya was given the black flag because of an infringement of the rules regarding the spare car, covered by Article 85 of the FIA Sporting Regulations.

MontoyaThe statement from the stewards read: "The Stewards, having received a report from the Race Director, have considered the following matter that Montoya joined the race after the start in a spare car in circumstances where the driver had not left the grid within 15 seconds of the start."

The fact that he was black flagged was not an issue with the team, what both team and driver were annoyed about was the delay in handing out the penalty. Juan Pablo was out on the track for over an hour before the news of the decision was passed onto the team.

Team boss Frank Williams said: "Juan is very upset about it. But I guess we got good mileage on the car for the sponsors! Juan was disqualified because the driver must be off the grid within 15 seconds of the start and we were off about 13 seconds."

Williams added: "We had another bad weekend."

BMW Motorsport boss Dr Mario Theissen also was far from happy. He added: "I haven't talked to the FIA people," Theissen said. "They will probably say that they were very busy with the incidents that happened on the track...but certainly we would have preferred to know immediately what was going on.

"It happened on the installation lap so there was plenty of time even before the start and early in the race to declare that that was not correct."

This was in reference to the fact that Ralf Schumacher had crashed out of the race and was taken to hospital. Coming on top of their disqualification from the Canadian Grand Prix the teams North American trip was far from productive with three disqualifications and one driver in hospital.
 
 
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