F1 World Enraged as Unfair FIA Ruling Saves Red Bull & Sergio Perez From Quali Embarrassment at Austrian GP

The Austrian Grand Prix has a long history of delivering spectacular racing events and, yet again, the short and high-speed circuit has lived up to its expectations, this time, over its first-ever Friday qualifying session. Of course, Mercedes ended up taking the spotlight for a rather grim reason. But they weren’t alone as, their arch-rivals, Red Bull, too, managed to attract fans’ attention for all the wrong reasons, thanks to the poor FIA action.

Warm and windy conditions welcomed the drivers to the qualifying session at Red Bull Ring. And when we say ‘windy’, it’s quite self-explanatory that there were numerous ‘lap time deletion’ messages popping up on the big screen.

Indeed, the stewards weren’t going easy on the drivers at all; A lot of them faced the wrath of the FIA for exceeding the track limits during out-laps as well. The actions, too, were rather spontaneous, as most of the drivers’ lap times endured deletion barely seconds after completing their respective laps.

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However, that certainly wasn’t the case with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, who managed to sneak his way into Q3. The Mexican, on his final run of Q2, visibly exceeded the track limits around the exit of turn 7. What’s more, this incident unfolded on live TV when the cameras were exclusively covering Perez’s lap.

FIA commits major error with Red Bull at Austrian GP

The entire F1 community, including the commentator, Martin Brundle, watched on as all four wheels of the Red Bull ran over the red-white kerbs. Hence, Perez returning to P13 (his position before the personal best lap) seemed pretty much imminent, leading to Pierre Gasly’s promotion into Q3.

But what followed was a shocker! The stewards failed to note the incident until seconds into the start of Q3. Meaning? Perez gained the chance to compete in the final part of qualifying despite his Q2 lap times possibly being invalidated.

The FIA eventually summoned Perez to report to the stewards at 19:00 local time at Red Bull Ring for “leaving the track without a justifiable reason.”

Read More: F1 Twitter Encourage Lewis Hamilton to Go ‘Onward & Upward’ as Red Bull Ring Fans Brutally Cheer Quali Crash at Austrian GP

Unsurprisingly, the fans are indignant with the FIA’s hefty blunder. Several even called out the governing body’s biased ruling for Red Bull whilst the rest of the grid was facing harsh treatment. We’ve hand-picked some of the tweets! Have a look at them:-