FEATURE
S
hortly after the chequered flag waved to
end qualifying for the 2016 Hungarian
Grand Prix, Red Bull team chief Christian
Horner questioned the legitimacy of Nico
Rosberg’s pole winning lap, set amid a yellow flag
situation in the dying moments of Q3.
The Mercedes driver set the quickest time
on his final run despite the presence of doublewaved yellow flags due to Fernando Alonso’s spin
exiting Turn 9.
The incident affected the fast laps that
Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s
Daniel Ricciardo were on at that point in the
session.
Horner said to Sky Sports immediately
afterwards, “One thing I couldn’t understand
which I need to check is Rosberg was behind
Daniel, and managed to get a purple middle
sector. I don’t know if they had it cleared by the
time he got there….”
When told that the Mercedes driver had
indeed lifted, Horner laughed and replied, “With
that sort of laptime? That’s down to the stewards
to decide.”
Rosberg explained after qualifying, “For sure
there was a waved yellows but I had a very, very
big lift and lost a lot of time as a result. I was also
slower than on my previous lap in that yellow
sector, or in that yellow segment or whatever it’s
called so I’m sure that will be OK.”
Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff backed his
driver by claiming that the team’s data proved the
Rosberg lifted sufficiently at the right time.
“[Rosberg] had a big lift into the yellow zone,
lost quite some time. But then at the end the
yellow zone was gone. It should be OK from our
data,” Wolff told Sky.