End-of-day report. Mexico Grand Prix, qualifying, Q1. I wasn’t there. I read about it in the evening, in Stavelot, the folder open on the kitchen table.
Eleven minutes on the clock. An Aston Martin stops in the middle of the track. Engine problem. Red flag. So far, nothing I don’t know. A stopped car: we signal, we wait, race control decides. I wave the flag. I don’t judge.
Then, the investigation. An infringement under general safety. The steering wheel had not been put back on the AMR26 after the stop. The heated room deliberated. Decision: a reprimand.
I note the procedure. A broken-down car must be handed back with its steering wheel. Like a post handed back with its chair, its thermos and its flag rolled up. At post 14, when we leave on Sunday evening, Jean-Luc checks that the camping chair is folded. Thirty years he has checked. Nobody has ever given him a reprimand. Nobody has ever given him a thank-you either. He says it comes to the same thing, the other way round.
Classification of the car concerned: 18th. The other Aston Martin: 20th and last. The driver said the team would look at what had happened, and that with the cooling difficulties, the race looked complicated. I have no view on cooling. At the post, cooling is the month of October.
Your correspondent, who has watched so many single-seaters give up the ghost from the sofa, had never given a thought to the steering wheel. We shall return to this.
Post 14, received. Nothing further to report.
It’s true, we checked: Nextgen-Auto.
