In a crushing decision, the FIA stewards have deemed Stefan Mucke’s restart under the safety car an offence and awarded a ten second time penalty, dropping him from first to third in today’s FIA GT World Cup qualification race in Macau. Unfortunately, this penalty will move Mucke down to third place for tomorrow’s starting grid as well. The officials found that Mucke “Failed to proceed at a pace involving no erratic acceleration or braking or any other manoeuvre likely to endanger other drivers or impede the restart.”

Data from the car showed that Mucke braked on the straight before the turn, then accelerated to near full race speed into the final turn. Mucke explained that this was to warm his tyres and did not consider that he was in the area of the restart.

This is a difficult decision for the team but Craft-Bamboo Racing will continue to fight for both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ FIA GT World Cup when their trio of Aston Martin’s take to the grid for Sunday’s main event.

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Richard Coleman, CEO of Craft-Bamboo Racing

“Stefan was slightly caught out by the restart; he didn’t realize how far the safety car was ahead and was still in the tyre warming phase. The stewards have given what we believe to be a very harsh penalty; we were fastest in free practice, fastest in qualifying, fastest in the qualification race and we also won the qualification race. To get a ten second penalty for tomorrow’s world cup is gutting for the whole team. Having said that, we’re quick and we will definitely not be giving up. If there is any justice in the world we will be winning tomorrow.”