Racing
© Artes Max from Spain
Charles Leclerc was given a formal warning after Monaco Grand Prix stewards ruled that a misunderstanding with Ferrari race engineer Bryan Bozzi led to him impeding Liam Lawson in FP1, while Lawson separately escaped punishment for crossing the pit exit as the light turned red.
The Leclerc incident happened at Turn 18 with just over 10 minutes left in the session. In the official decision, the stewards said Ferrari told Car 16, “3 seconds to Bearman, 5 seconds to Lawson,” which was accurate, but Leclerc reasonably took that to mean there were five seconds between Oliver Bearman and Lawson when the actual gap was only two seconds. That misread left Lawson unnecessarily blocked.
The stewards said they heard from Leclerc, Lawson and team representatives and reviewed “positioning/marshalling system data, video, team radio and in-car video evidence” before concluding: “This misunderstanding was ultimately responsible for the unnecessary impeding.” They added that Ferrari agreed it “would revise its communication protocols to minimise the future risk of misunderstandings.”
It was Leclerc’s second FIA matter of the weekend after he and Lando Norris were each handed a suspended €5,000 fine for arriving late to Thursday’s FIA drivers’ press conference.
Lawson’s own investigation came at the end of FP1 after Fernando Alonso’s late crash brought out a red flag. The session was briefly resumed to allow practice starts, but as Lawson drove down the pit lane, the exit light changed from green to red when he was about 0.8 seconds from the line.
In its report, the FIA said, “The driver was warned he had 7 seconds left when he left the garage,” and noted that Lawson told his team over the radio he had been watching the countdown clock above the pit exit, which still showed two seconds remaining. The stewards stressed that the countdown clock is not official and does not override the red light, but they also accepted that Lawson had less than a second to react and that trying to stop could have left him stationary on a live track. “In view of the above mitigating circumstances, no penalty will be imposed,” they said.
A similar communication error also featured in another FP1 ruling, with Arvid Lindblad receiving a formal warning for impeding Oscar Piastri at Turn 12. The stewards found Racing Bulls had earlier told Lindblad that Piastri had aborted his lap when he had not, and warned that similar misinterpretations in future “may almost certainly result in more severe penalties.”
That left Friday in Monaco shaped less by aggressive driving than by flawed information and split-second timing, with Ferrari and Racing Bulls both pushed to tighten procedures before the weekend’s more consequential sessions.