BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat was two penalty points away from a race ban on Saturday after Hungarian Grand Prix stewards handed the Russian Formula One driver a three-place grid drop.
Kvyat will start 16th on Sunday and was also given a penalty point, taking his 12-month tally to 10, for impeding Williams’s Canadian rookie Lance Stroll during qualifying.
Any driver who accumulates 12 points in the space of a year is automatically given a ban.
Kvyat has now collected points on three successive race weekends and will not shed any of his tally until after the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 22 — meaning he has to stay out of trouble for the next seven races.
In Austria the Russian was handed two points for a collision with McLaren’s Fernando Alonso while in Britain he collected two more for a first-lap incident with Spanish team mate Carlos Sainz.
“Stewards determined that Kvyat was on an exceptionally slow lap having spun earlier and damaged his tyres,” the governing FIA said in a statement on Saturday.
While accepting that he was warned by the team very late of Stroll’s approach, and that he also pulled to the right when he saw the Canadian, the stewards ruled that they were not mitigating factors.
“Kyvat was driving exceptionally slowly and taking the racing line at the end of Q1 (the first phase of qualifying) when other drivers were attempting to set fast laps and this led to the unnecessary impeding,” the FIA said.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis)
