De Vries receives a fine and grid penalty after an outage in Berlin

8:37 – Nyck de Vries has been fined 5,000 euros and a grid penalty of five places for getting out without permission and pushing his car away during the second Formula E race in Berlin.

In lap 15, the Mercedes driver had a moment in the first corner on the reverse layout at Tempelhof airport where he firmly blocked a wheel. After going wide and immediately slowing down, the car slowly crept towards the exit lane of Turn 2, where he parked his car. De Vries then immediately got out, instead of waiting for instructions from race director Scot Elkins. A neutralization came about when De Vries pushed the Silver Arrow 01 with the assistance of the marshals – who are limited in number due to the new coronavirus protocols of Formula E – to a hole in the wall.

De Vries received two penalties for this. By getting out of the car without permission, he broke article 1.6 of the notes from the drivers briefing and article 30.7 of the sporting regulations of Formula E. For this he was fined 5,000 euros. A decision was also made about the fact that De Vries was pushing his car away. “The driver of car # 17 created a dangerous situation when he pushed the car into turn 2 while other cars were on the track.” In the next race next Saturday, in which the traditional layout of Tempelhof is used, De Vries will be put back five places on the starting grid. In addition, he has received five points on his racing license, bringing the total for the Dutchman to eight.

Before the withdrawal, De Vries was in fifth position, after losing places to Lucas di Grassi and Robin Frijns. The cause of the withdrawal is still unknown, he said after the race: “We had a competitive start to the day and were in a good starting position to do a competitive race, but unfortunately we lost everything. That can happen. Too bad, but what can I do about it? We will of course look for the cause and see if we can find what happened. “

In collaboration with Matt Kew