G-Drive Racing #26 will possibly have a handicap at the FIA WEC round at the Nürburgring i July.
The next round that Roman Rusinov will participate in, the team he competes for, will have to do a 3 minutes Stop & GO penalty, and further have a suspended 3 minutes Stop & GO penalty, if he should break any kind of offences for the next three races.
During the Le Mans week, Rusinov was not just one, not limited to twice, not even three times, but a total of four times involved in an incident that the stewards had to look into.
It all started in the Qualifying Session 2, when Rusinov was in the car. At 20:34 he overtook another car in a Yellow Flag zone on the track. By doing that, the stewards removed all the times he had set during that session.
At 20:50 on the same day, he was under investigation again. When he had entered the pitlane, he was called to the weight scale. He then rolled off the weight scale again before the officials were done with checking the weight. The decision in this case, was that he hadn’t received clear signs from the officials about what to do, and he thought he was allowed to leave. He got a reprimand for that.
Photo: JJ Media
22 minutes into the race on Saturday afternoon, Rusinov has a spin at the Ford Chicane. He decided to drive the opposite direction of the normal lap, and then enter the pitlane, but not going through the entire length of the pitlane. In the pitlane he gets his tires changed, refueled and other checks of the car. Race stewards gives the team a 10 minutes Stop & Go penalty for that.
Even before that decision was announced at 16:34, Rusinov had already been involved in another incident on the track. At 16:15 he collided with Proton Competition Porsche #88 going into, ironically, the Porsche Curves. This destroyed both cars, and even though both could make it back to the pitlane, they were both retired in their respective garages.
Due to these four happenings during one single event, and that the car retired from the race, the only option for race control was to no give him a penalty for this event, but transfer the penalties to the coming races.
Roman Rusinov is the man who brings G-Drive branding to G-Drive Racing, who is run by TDS Racing this year in the FIA WEC, so the chances for him to be in the car at Nürburgring are quite big. This penalty is attached to the driver, and can only be executed in the FIA WEC series – with no specified expiry date . So in the case that we don’t see Rusinov for the rest of the season, he apparently just keep the penalty for his first race in 2018, 2019 or whenever he decides to take his next start in the FIA WEC.
