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Haas F1 team plans to investigate Estenban Gutierrez's penalty which he received in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Mexican was slapped with a five second time penalty after it was deemed that he had ignored blue flags and held up race winner Lewis Hamilton.
However, team principal Guenther Steiner believes that the penalty was only a result of Hamilton appeared to gesture to Gutierrez, and not because he help up Hamilton.
"I don't know what he was annoyed about, because he didn't keep him back that long," Steiner said. "Esteban got penalised by five seconds and we still need to check the data and the timing but I think the five seconds were given because the gesture was done, not because he was holding him up."
"Every racing driver is the same, they all want to go and Esteban cannot go into fresh air, he cannot jump. So it's a little bit of give and take. I think the good thing is we wouldn't have got in the points without the five seconds. I think Lewis' result wasn't changed with the hold-up, so in the end was it needed? Maybe not, but it happens. For me the five seconds were given because of the gesture."
Despite saying that, Steiner admitted that he was unsure if there were other similar incidents involving drivers ignoring blue flags in the race and the team would have to investigate the matter further.
"We have to check the time and we will do a proper evaluation, seeing how long other people were ignoring blue flags and compare it with how long he was ignoring blue flags to see if he was actually ignoring them longer than anybody else," he said. "Maybe there was somebody else ignoring them longer but Lewis Hamilton didn't give them a gesture so maybe that guy wasn't penalised."
"It's difficult for the stewards, I'm not saying it's easy. It's very difficult because it's a judgement call, it's not only numbers," he continued. "I have not got the knowledge but for sure we are going to look at some numbers, how long other people ignored blue flags and if there was anybody longer is there a good reason why they didn't get five seconds?"
Hungaroring - 24 July 2016
C. Leclerc
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