Andretti United has received a five second penalty for knocking down a safety barrier in the Jurassic X-Prix final, but still retains its third place from the race.
When entering her bay for the driver switch at the end of lap two of three, Andretti’s Catie Munnings knocked down a barrier and after the race the stewards determined that her arrival to the bay had been in a dangerous manner.
With that approach being the cause of the barrier being knocked down, her team was handed a five-second penalty.
Fortunately for Andretti, Rosberg X Racing crossed the line six seconds behind in fourth meaning that Andretti narrowly managed to retain its place on the podium and therefore third and fourth in the drivers’ and teams’ standings respectively.
The incident caps off an incident-filled Extreme E season finale for Andretti, with Munnings involved in two incidents with JBXE earlier in the race.
The first incident occurred on lap one when JBXE’s Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky went off the track while the pair were fighting for second, and when she returned to the track it pushed Munnings towards the trees that surrounded the Bovington tank testing ground XE was racing on.
“We’re following quite closely behind other cars, from what I saw, [Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky] hit a bump and went off track,” explained Munnings after the race.
“I kind of had the line coming in. I thought I was happily keeping the line. She kind of came on and pushed me wide so I was then in the trees.
“It was the fastest corner on the track, 110-120km/h, so obviously I’m not just going to sail into the trees. I had to do the safe thing and lift.”
Munnings had to settle for third place on that occasion, but a lap later, it appeared as though she was about to make a pass on Ahlin-Kottulinsky for second coming up to the driver switch zone, but the pair made contact which put the Andretti car into a spin.
“Coming into the pitlane, a similar thing. She came over the bump and ran wide,” added Munnings.
“I just kind of drove straight, but she squeezed me out and I’m not gonna just run into the side of them.
“We hit a water splash, I think we had contact and it ended up putting me in the ditch, so I reversed.
“To be honest, I thought I’d lost it then at that point. I thought there’s no way that Rosberg would have lost that much time to us on that lap. So we were lucky to hold on to third there.”
