An error monitoring track limits saw Williams driver Alex Albon unfairly bumped from qualifying. This is not the first time the FIA has made this kind of mistake in a qualifying session, similar issues occurred as recently as the final race of 2024 with Oscar Piastri and Sergio Perez having lap times deleted then reinstated.

A situation similar to the most recent one transpired in Austria in 2022, where Sergio Perez’ Q2 lap was only found to be illegal after qualifying had ended and he had already taken part in Q3.

This time during the first segment of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix, Nico Hülkenburg’s final lap at the end of the session jumped him to P15 at the expense of Albon just half a tenth behind, who took no further part in qualifying finishing sixteenth. The entire Q2 session took place as normal with Hülkenburg finishing in thirteenth. However at the beginning of the Q3 session Hülkenburg’s final Q1 lap was deleted, effectively meaning it was Albon not him who should have had the opportunity to participate in the second part of qualifying.

Williams were understandably not pleased about the situation but unfortunately not much can be done to rectify the mistake in these circumstances. The FIA took the only reasonable choice of deleting Hülkenburg’s laps from Q2 so he ended up classified behind Albon in sixteenth.

With persistent timing issues on the broadcast, fires across the Chinese GP weekend and problems with the DRS system in Bahrain, the FIA and FOM will be looking to get these operational issues under control for the upcoming races.

Header Image by Morio, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons