SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Pic gets community service!

Marussia driver Charles Pic will have 20 seconds added to his race time in the Singapore Grand Prix after he overtook a car under red flag conditions when the final session of free practice was halted after Vitaly Petrov crashed his Caterham.

Marussia driver Charles Pic will have 20 seconds added to his race time in the Singapore Grand Prix after he overtook a car under red flag conditions when the final session of free practice was halted after Vitaly Petrov crashed his Caterham

Pic has impressed in the Marussia alongside Timo Glock this year, and the team performance in Singapore is notable too, Glock qualifying just 0.24s behind Heikki Kovalainen's Caterham despite losing half of FP3 to a throttle sensor issue. And in that, it must be remembered that Marussia does not have a KERS system, a situation that will change when the team adopts the Williams system in 2013.

Pic lines up 0.39s behind his team mate but as well as his 20s race time penalty, his indiscretion -- he passed four sets of red lights before overtaking the car -- has earned him and his engineer a day's community service for the FIA's Action For Road Safety Campaign, at the instruction of FIA president Jean Todt.

"With regard to the penalty imposed by the FIA," Pic admitted, "I have seen the information and would like to say that I completely agree with it. It was a mistake on my part and I will use the experience wisely."