The good news for Jan Seinen and the triumvirate of Dakar Rally FIA stewards is everybody’s finally keeping their seatbelts fastened. Unfortunately, the issue they face now is people breaking neutralization zone policies.

For the more French-savvy readers, the neutralization zone is where times are frozen. Drivers must enter and leave by the same interval (for example, if Driver A arrived ahead of Driver B by 15 seconds, they must leave with that same gap on Driver B and no sooner or later), while they are not allowed to work on their vehicles. In essence, it is a parc fermé area.

Infractions in this area are often handled by the Clerk of the Course, which in this race’s case is Benoît Soulas. Most of the penalties he hands out are for those not respecting the arrival and departure interval, such as leaving neutralization earlier than they should, which typically results in 20 minutes being added. Neutralization penalties have also been prevalent on the bike side, where Soulas’ FIM equivalent Robert Mentaverri has handed them out on a near-daily basis.

Seinen and the FIA stewards, on the other hand, are tasked with investigating more serious violations that are reported by other drivers or race personnel. On Wednesday, they were particularly busy in hearing these cases.

Kay Huzink received a ten-minute penalty for Stage 9 because his mechanic Gerrit Schoneveld was spotted going under their Renault Hybrid. Schoneveld explained he was only checking for cosmetic damage and the times they actually touched their truck was to serve food and drinks. However, Soulas’ report mentioned Schoneveld was holding zip ties when he went under while photographic evidence showed him reaching toward the truck’s underbelly.

During Stage 10 on Wednesday, Kevin Benavides was caught inflating one of his tires while in neutralization. The former Dakar bike winner-turned-Challenger driver quickly admitted he didn’t know it was forbidden and apologized, though he was still slapped with five minutes.

Silvio Totani didn’t touch his MD Optimus while in parc fermé, but he got ten minutes added to his Stage 10 time because he didn’t stop at the starting line before re-entering the Selective Section. Since he had been penalized twice for the same infraction in Stages 1 and 2, the FIA handed him a heftier penalty than the one and four minutes he respectively got for those days.

Featured image credit: Antonin Vincent / DPPI / ASO