Christian Horner believes the stewards have been "very harsh" on Sergio Perez in the wake of his grid penalty after qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Mexican thought he was going to be starting the Sprint race from fourth, behind the two Ferraris and pole-sitter, team-mate Max Verstappen. But he was summoned to the stewards after the session as they investigated his hot laps during Q2.
He had already had some times scrubbed, but his final hot lap initially stood and booked him a place in Q3. But footage later showed he had exceeded track limits during the course of that lap – and so he was slapped with a penalty.
As he had already made it to Q3 before that punishment was given out, stewards decided the fairest way to deal with it was to delete all his times in that final part of the session, as well as the lap which broke the rules in Q2. It leaves Perez starting the Sprint from 13th.
And Red Bull chief Horner reacted by saying: "We feel the penalty for Checo was very harsh and should have been dealt with before Q3 to enable us to improve subsequent performance. He will do his best from P13 and try and put us in a better position for Sunday's race."
In the official report, the stewards explained: "The usual penalty is deleting the lap time concerned and the stewards order the same penalty here. However, as a consequence, the driver would not have proceeded into Q3 and therefore, in fairness to all the other competitors, the stewards order all the lap times for Q3 for the driver also are deleted."
Reacting to that punishment, Perez bemoaned the way the incident was handled and wished the lap time had been immediately deleted like had been the case with many others. "It was a tricky day, going into qualifying from FP1 things didn't feel great so there is a bit of understanding needed from our side and hopefully tomorrow we are able to recover," he said.
"The car was in and out for me during the day and during quali, I wasn't able to get into the rhythm. It is disappointing to lose fourth place, the track limits are very tight here this season, but it is frustrating that the team weren't told my lap time had been deleted during Q2."
