Cadillac driver Sebastien Bourdais has lashed out at the stewards’ decision to penalise his team-mate Jenson Button in the World Endurance Championship finale in Bahrain.
One-time Formula 1 world champion Button, competing in his final professional race, was slapped with a 30-second stop/go penalty for causing a collision with the #54 Ferrari 296 GT3 of Thomas Flohr in the Bahrain 8 Hours.
The Briton was battling with the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon van der Linde for 16th position in the fourth hour when they approached the Ferrari of gentleman driver Flohr into Turn 3.
While van der Linde took the inside line, Button tried to go around the Swiss billionaire and put a lap on the LMGT3 contender. However, as they exited the right-hander, the two cars made contact, sending the Ferrari into the barriers and triggering the first safety car of the race.
Button was deemed “wholy responsible” for the incident by the stewards, with the penalty leaving the #38 Jota Cadillac V-Series.R he shared with Bourdais and Earl Bamber two laps down in 16th place.
However, four-time CART champion Bourdais sharply criticised the call, arguing it reflects a long-running pattern of prototypes being punished for incidents involving LMGT3 cars.
“I’m honestly tired of the stewards’ decisions that don’t seem to understand racing,” the 46-year-old told Motorsport.com.
“It’s extremely frustrating. The entire paddock of drivers and 75% of the paddock is going to think that the GT is at fault.
“They have cameras, they have every way possible to see what’s going on behind them. The guy overreacts to the BMW that’s poking his nose to the right and makes contact with the back of JB’s car to his front. How is that the prototype’s fault?
“What was he supposed to do? When he has to go to the outside, there is no room on the right. So where is he supposed to go?
“I just want them at some point to be like, ‘OK, you think this is your road. Tell me what it is that you think we should have done?’ If you have a solid argument, then I understand. But otherwise, I’m sorry. It’s just a racing incident and we’re just lucky we didn’t get taken out.
“Unfortunately, this is never the way they go about it. When there’s a crash like this, someone has to be guilty — and it’s always the prototype, and I’m just tired of it.
“Unfortunately, it’s not even a drive-through or 10-second penalty. So we got that minute lost. So then, I don’t even know why they let you finish the race. Because they might as well park you at that point. You’re done. It’s frustrating.”
He added: “Every time, it’s just wrong side of the fence [for us]. It’s frustrating. We’ve eaten all the crap this year, and hopefully it’s going to be a good one next year.”
While the sister #12 Cadillac raced by Alex Lynn, Norman Nato and Will Stevens finished as the top Cadillac LMDh car in sixth, the #38 never appeared to be in the hunt for a top result.
Bamber started the race from 13th on the grid but had dropped towards the rear of the pack when he handed over the car to Button in the third hour.
Bourdais felt strategic mistakes left Cadillac on the back foot in the opening stages of the race, before Button’s incident with Flohr ended any hopes of a recovery.
“Honestly, we made the wrong call on strategy,” the Frenchman explained. “We had saved fuel and we should have gone long. The engineers overreacted a little bit to the traffic situation and the BMW and instead of going long, we went short.
“We had planned to shortfuel to jump them, but then you shortfuel, instead of being able to go fast because you short fuel and you stopped early, now you’ve got to save fuel again. So, we couldn’t run away.
“That was a big mistake. Then you miss the train, you start to drop time. We lost tyre temp, we lost space and then you’re not in the right place in the race anymore, and you’re not fighting.
“So, we put JB in the car but the damage was already done in some ways. We were praying for a safety car and unfortunately, the safety car was [caused by] us.”
Full stewards verdict
“Having reviewed the video evidence, the stewards determined that Cars 38 and 20 were following Car 54 when approaching Turn 3. Car 20 attempted to overtake on the right-hand side, while Car 38 moved to the outside. Car 54 remained in the middle, maintaining its racing line without any erratic change of direction. At the exit of Turn 3, the rear of Car 38 made contact with the front of Car 54 at hight speed, causing Car 54 to spin and crash into the barriers.
“Considering the matter extensively, the stewards concluded that Car 38 was wholly responsible for the incident, as Car 54 had acted correctly throughout. The Stewards therefore decided to impose a 30-second stop-and-go penalty on Car 38.”
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