Esteban Ocon receives apology from Formula 1 and FIA for Azerbaijan pit lane mishap

With tyre wear not being much of an issue in Baku, Ocon waited until the final lap of the race to make his mandatory pit stop.

Every driver has to make at least one pit stop and used two different grades of tyre in every race otherwise he would undoubtedly have gone the distance.

However, track officials had assumed every driver had made their pit stops for the race, as is usually the case and allowed a group of people, including journalists and official photographers into the pitlane in order to get onto the pit wall to document the conclusion of the event.

Ocon saw the people in his way just in time and was able to slow down enough to let them get out of the way, narrowly avoiding a disaster.

The result was an investigation by the stewards that found the FIA needed to take immediate action to update protocols to ensure there was no chance of anything like this ever happening again.

"The FIA has apologised and Formula 1," he told Sky Sports News. "They assured us that this is not going to happen anymore. Thank God nothing happened and so all good from now.

"We are racing at the time. It's of course normal that there shouldn't be anyone in the pit lane until after we are racing like that.

"These things are normally not going to happen, the FIA has assured us that they are making sure they are changing the protocol and making sure there is no one in the pit lane until the end, so I'm confident we will not see that anymore."

If the rules have been updated in time for this weekend's Miami Grand Prix, there is apparently no mention of it in the race director's notes for the weekend.