F1 Driver Close to Rare Punishment Only Seen Once in 13 Years After Italian GP Penalty

An F1 driver is closing in on a rare FIA punishment after being awarded a penalty during the Italian Grand Prix.

Haas driver Oliver Bearman was given a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision with Williams' Carlos Sainz.

The Englishman was in contention for points before the incident, but lost considerable time as a result as both he and Sainz lost control.

As it turned out, the penalty made no difference to his finishing position, as he crossed the line 12th and 11.5 seconds ahead of next highest-placed finisher Yuki Tsunoda.

However, two penalty points have also been added to his licence, moving him on to 10 over the past 12-month period.

If he receives two more points before the Brazilian Grand Prix - when his first points are wiped from his licence - he will serve a one-race ban.

The last driver to receive a ban was another Haas driver, Kevin Magnussen, last season.

He was punished for an incident during the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, and was forced to sit out the following race in Azerbaijan.

Coincidentally, his replacement was Bearman himself, who went on to finish in 10th place and pick up a point.

Previously, the last driver to be banned for a single race was Romain Grosjean back in 2012.

The French driver caused a multi-car pile-up at the first corner of the Belgian Grand Prix, causing Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kamui Kobayashi to all retire from the race.

Grosjean would miss the Italian Grand Prix and be replaced by Lotus reserve driver Jerome D'Ambrosio, who is now working in a managerial role at Ferrari.

The Belgian is the Scuderia's deputy team principal, and stood in for regular team principal Frederic Vasseur when he was forced to miss the Austrian Grand Prix earlier this season.

The circumstances behind Grosjean's penalty was different to Magnussen's, as he had not accrued the 12 penalty point limit to trigger a race ban.

Though he had already been involved in seven incidents during the 2012 season to that point, the FIA explained the sanction as resulting from an 'extremely serious breach of the regulations, which had the potential to cause injury to others'.

Why Bearman was given a penalty

Though fans were divided over whether Bearman deserved such a severe sanction - or whether the crash was his fault - the FIA declared that the Haas driver was 'predominantly at fault' for the collision.

Their statement reads: "Car 55 [Sainz] attempted to overtake Car 87 [Bearman] on the outside into Turn 4 and had its front axle ahead of the front axle of Car 87 at the apex, thereby earning the right to the racing line.

"The driver of Car 87 defended his position on the inside instead of giving up the position and caused the collision.

"The Stewards determine that the driver of Car 87 is predominantly at fault and therefore the standard penalty for such incidents is applied."