Brundle brands Lindblad's Dutch GP drive-through penalty harsh after Verstappen crash chaos

F1 TV analyst Alex Brundle has called the drive-through penalty handed to Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad at the Dutch Grand Prix “harsh”, saying stewards went too far in punishing a driver who was actively avoiding a crash.

The race at Zandvoort was disrupted on the opening lap when Max Verstappen crashed at Turn 14. Lindblad, running behind the four-time champion, took evasive action and in doing so passed Pierre Gasly’s Alpine heading into Turn 1. The stewards ruled it a yellow flag infringement and issued the 19-year-old a drive-through penalty that effectively ended his race.

Speaking on F1 TV’s post-race show, Brundle outlined why he felt the punishment was disproportionate. “The accepted way to go about it as a driver is if you’re effectively avoiding the crash, you avoid the crash and you do everything that you can to make sure that you don’t become part of the accident,” he said. “It’s difficult to then add in extra things that the drivers have to be aware of during an incident to make sure that they don’t then pass a car secondarily to that.”

Brundle acknowledged the decision could depend on a driver’s proximity to the original incident, but maintained that penalising someone for passing another car while in evasive mode was excessive. “If you haven’t actually passed a yellow flag and if you’re actually trying to get around the incident, I think it’s harsh then to penalise you for passing another driver while you’re actually taking evasive action,” he added.

Lindblad himself echoed that view after the race. “Max lost it, then he came across the track, and there was debris everywhere. I couldn’t really see anything,” the Racing Bulls driver told F1 TV. “I tried to avoid making contact. I think I almost hit one of his tyres. Then I was just holding my line and trying to just go straight to not have any incident or anything.”

The Briton said he saw no flags during the sequence of events and felt the severity of the sanction was out of proportion. “I also think the penalty is a bit harsh. I think we can all be honest. It took me out of the race, basically. It was quite extreme for such an incident, but fine. It is what it is.”

The incident adds to a broader debate in Formula 1 about how stewards should handle overtakes that occur as a direct consequence of a driver avoiding danger, rather than as a deliberate attempt to gain positions under caution.