Mehdi Bennani excluded from race two for being underweight

Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani has been excluded from the second race in Marrakech after his Honda Civic was found to be underweight in post race scrutineering.

The driver had already had a dramatic second race, first with the incident with Tom Coronel at the start, then receiving a drive-through penalty whilst leading and defending against Citroën’s Sébastien Loeb.

After the drive-through, Benanni climbed his way back up the order, passing Tom Chilton’s Chevrolet to claim fourth but lost out in a drag race with the British driver by less than a tenth of a second to be classified fifth in the provisional results. However, he has now been excluded as his car has been found to be underweight in scrutineering.

The minimum weight for the Honda Civic, like the Citroën, the Lada and the Chevrolet, which all are running maximum ballast in Morocco and France, is 1,164kg.