McLaren fined for unsafe release of Vandoorne in Austria

McLaren haven’t really had the perfect start to the season after making the switch from Honda to Renault. While reliability has gone up a notch, the performance rise isn’t as steep as expected, as the Woking team hasn’t been able to challenge the top 3 in any which way.

Fernando Alonso’s Le Mans 24 victory and his attempt to win the motorsport triple crown could further dampen McLaren spirits towards the end of the season, if the Spaniard decides to put his entire focus on the IndyCar event.

However, for now, McLaren need to get a hold of the simple things and not think too much about what the future holds for them.

And when you talk about doing the simple things right, the least they can do is avoid sending their driver off into the path of another car speeding its way towards the end of the pitlane.

In free practice today at Austria, Vandoorne was released by the McLaren team and Vettel who was making his way out of the pit lane, almost ran into him.

McLaren have now been penalised for it as a €10,000 fine has been slapped for an unsafe release of Vandoorne into the path of Vettel during FP1.

McLaren have admitted to the fact that it was indeed their wrong doing that led to that ‘mini-incident’ in the pitlane.

“It was noted that the driver of car 5 had to brake heavily to avoid a collision, locking the front wheels. McLaren admitted that the release was the fault of the team” the FIA statement read.

McLaren would be hoping that they can put this little incident behind them and focus on how they can produce a satisfactory result in Austria.