Rumor: Alonso to be given Saudi Arabia GP 3rd place back (Now Fact!) (Update)

–by Mark Cipolloni–

As we reported earlier, the FIA Stewards don’t know their own rule book.  In fact as you read below, they did not address their other error – that the penalty had to be imposed within 30 laps – it was not – hence the penalty had to be reversed.

With that said, here is the excuse the FIA gave for giving Alonso back his rightfully earned 3rd place.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin F1 Team, 3rd position, gets his trophy back. LAT photo for Aston Martin

The FIA released a document that said Aston Martin had submitted a letter to review the 10-second penalty.

“In support of the Petition for Review, the Stewards were shown minutes of the latest SAC meeting and video evidence of 7 different instances where cars were touched by the jack while serving a similar penalty to the one imposed on Car 14 without being penalized.

“The clear submission by the Team was that the alleged representation of an agreement between the FIA and the teams that touching the car in any way, including with a jack, would constitute ‘working’ on the car for the purposes of Article 54.4 (c) of the Sporting Regulations, was incorrect and therefore the basis of the Stewards’ decision was wrong.

“In the light of the Petition, the Stewards had to decide if there was a ‘significant and relevant new element [that was] discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned’. If there was such an element(s) then the Stewards would need to consider whether the decision needed to be modified in any way.

“Having reviewed the video evidence presented and having heard from the Team representative of Aston Martin and the relevant members from the FIA, the Stewards determined that there did exist significant and relevant new evidence as required under Article 14.1.1 to trigger a review of the decision, in particular the video evidence and the verbal evidence from the Team and from the FIA. It was clear to us that the substratum of the original decision, namely the representation of there being an agreement, was called into question by the new evidence.

“We therefore proceeded to hear the substance of the request for review. Having reviewed the new evidence, we concluded that there was no clear agreement, as was suggested to the Stewards previously, that could be relied upon to determine that parties had agreed that a jack touching a car would amount to working on the car.

“In the circumstances, we considered that our original decision to impose a penalty on Car 14 needed to be reversed and we did so accordingly.”

Alonso therefore retains his third-place finish at Jeddah and his 100th F1 career podium finish.

George Russell had to give the 3rd place trophy back to Alonso. 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Sunday – Steve Etherington photo for Mercedes

March 19, 2023 

Rumor has it that George Russell is set to be demoted back to P4 at the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, as Aston Martin have a great chance of appealing the post-race penalty Fernando Alonso was slapped with in Saudi Arabia because the hapless FIA did not follow their own rules.

Alonso had crossed the finish line in P3 to score his second consecutive podium for the Silverstone-based team.

However, he was handed a 10-second post-race penalty for incorrectly serving his 5-second time penalty – which he was awarded for being out of position in his grid slot at the race start.

Specifically, a jack was touching the car while Alonso was still serving the penalty in his pit-box.

This led to the FIA penalizing Alonso, in the same manner Esteban Ocon was penalized for incorrectly serving his penalty at the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix.

However, while Ocon was notified of this additional penalty during the race, Alonso was penalized after the grand prix was over.

And what is key here – Alonso infringement took place on lap 19 out of 50, 31 laps before the end of the race. The team wasn’t notified of his second penalty within 30 laps of it taking place, it seems the FIA screwed up again.

This is because the regulations stipulate that the FIA stewards have a maximum of 30 laps to inform a driver of a penalty; otherwise, they escape punishment for the infringement.

This is likely to be Toto Wolff’s reaction:

Toto Wolff has anger management issues

 

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