It was a moment of shock that, exceptionally, did not happen on the narrow streets of Monaco, but in the pit lane: Ferrari driver and pole setter Charles Leclerc had been called to a weight control towards the end of Q2, but had overlooked the signal and just kept driving.
Had he been driven into his garage and had any work done on the car, if only to change a tire, that would have been enough to penalize him for breaking the rules.
But thanks to his Ferrari team’s quick reaction, Leclerc escaped a possible penalty: they told the Monegasque to stop while mechanics came to their aid to push his car back to the checkweigher. Leclerc finally passed the test without any problems.
Why Leclerc just kept going
The 24-year-old admitted he simply didn’t see the sign to turn onto the scales: “It’s very tricky here because we’re coming into the pits and I don’t even know where the sign is, whether it’s right or left. But it’s very far, far right or far left, so you don’t look that way.”
That’s why he missed the call. “Luckily the team saw the alarm and just told me to stop. They then pushed me back. It wasn’t nice to be in the same group as the others afterwards but we worked our way out of that tricky situation .”
Leclerc was still in contention for pole, benefiting from a late red flag set off by a crash for Sergio Pérez (Red Bull) and Carlos Sainz (Ferrari).
In 2019, two riders had a similar experience
The pole setter doesn’t have to fear a penalty for almost missing the weigh-in, even though the rules of Formula 1 are pretty strict on this point. In Bahrain, for example, Pierre Gasly had to start from the pit lane in 2019 after missing a weight control in practice and his team working on the car.
The same thing happened to Perez at the US Grand Prix that year. In both cases Article 35.1 b) of the sporting regulations applied, which states that any driver who does not stop and fails to return the car to the checkpoint before work is carried out on it will be referred to the stewards.
The penalties can be very severe: “In the event of a violation of these regulations for weighing the cars, the stewards can downgrade the driver by a number of starting places they deem appropriate or disqualify him from the sprint or the race,” the regulations say .
Leclerc is lucky. Because missing a weight control is only not penalized if the teams react immediately to their drivers’ mistakes – like with him. Although he is not an isolated case, because such a scenario has already happened twice in Monaco.
In 2019, both Perez and Nico Hulkenberg missed the call for the weigh-in in qualifying. However, as with Leclerc, the teams reacted in good time and sent their drivers back for inspection before any work was done on the car. There were no penalties then as there are now.