The saga was related to the verdict issued after the stewards investigated Max Verstappen for impeding Yuki Tsunoda in Q2, and which saw the Dutchman escape with a reprimand.
An intriguing note at the bottom of the stewards’ decision said that “it was noted that the representative of car 22 chose not to attend the hearing”.
The inference that people inevitably took from that statement was that AlphaTauri has skipped the hearing in order to minimise the chances of a driver from sister team Red Bull receiving a penalty.
In fact the matter was more complicated than that, because the Faenza outfit didn’t receive a formal summons about attending the hearing.
Usually in impeding cases summonses come in pairs, with both parties asked to attend at a set time.
In this case the Verstappen/Tsunoda example appears to have been impacted by an entirely separate case that emerged earlier in qualifying.
That one involved Logan Sargeant being investigated for allegedly impeding Lance Stroll.
However Stroll crashed heavily at the end of Q1 and was seeing the FIA medical delegate, so it appears that the stewards decided not to issue a formal summons for him to attend, presumably because they felt that they had enough evidence to review without speaking to the Canadian.
Source: Autosport