Frédéric Vervisch handed grid penalty for Race 1 incident in Morocco

Comtoyou Racing’s Frédéric Vervisch has been handed a five-place grid penalty for the next race for the incident at the start of Race 1 in Marrakech, when he collided with Münnich Motorsport’s James Thompson into Turn 1 at the start.

Vervisch turned around Thompson’s car and then went wide into the wall, also collecting team-mate Aurélien Panis, the Boutsen Ginion Honda of Tom Coronel and the DG Sport Peugeot 308TCR of Mat’o Homola.

Homola and Coronel’s races were effectively over due to the damage they sustained, while Vervisch and Panis were out on the spot, with the race red-flagged as the Belgian’s car was recovered.

“You can’t legislate about people trying to take you out of the race,” said a frustrated James Thompson to TouringCarTimes. “He hit me and then kept his foot down on the throttle, trying to spin me out of the way, which is something like you do on a PlayStation. He took two people out of the race, which was not very clever.”

Vervisch will drop five positions from the grid for Race 2, with the grid order still to be determined tomorrow morning in qualifying at 10:30 local time.