F1 News

Alonso gets seventh place back: FIA official interfered with penalty

28 October 2022 at 06:40
Last update 28 October 2022 at 08:31
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  • GPblog.com

Fernando Alonso has recovered his seventh place from the United States Grand Prix. A protest against the FIA's decision was previously dismissed, but Alpine has been vindicated via a Right of Review.

Penalty for Alonso

Alonso lost his hard-fought seventh place after the US GP. It was a miracle that the Spaniard was driving at all after his crash with Lance Stroll and all the more so that he also sent that half-car to seventh place. The stewards did not give Alonso a 'meatball' flag to come in with his badly damaged car and that was against Haas' wishes.

The American team had complained many times in recent weeks that its drivers did have to come in for a bit of car damage, and now saw a heavily damaged Alpine driving around the Circuit of the Americas. A protest was lodged and Alonso was given a 30-second penalty which put him out of the points.

Alonso now has those points back. An FIA document shows that the decision itself was not initially overturned, so there was nothing the French team could do about that. However, the team found out that Haas had not lodged the protest within the mandatory 30 minutes, when, according to Haas, it could have done so. The regulations state that it can only be handed in after thirty minutes if it is impossible to hand it in within that time.

FIA is in the wrong again

Since Haas itself acknowledged that it could have handed in the documents within the 30 minutes, the FIA had to declare the protest invalid and with it the penalty. The remarkable thing about the case is that an FIA official allegedly informed Haas that they had to hand in the protest within an hour. As a result, the team did not hurry. It is also remarkable that an FIA official would communicate this to a team in this way at all.

By reversing the penalty, Fernando Alonso gets his seventh place back and with it the six points. Sebastian Vettel, Kevin Magnussen, Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon all move back one place. For Ocon, this means he falls just outside the points.

Source: Twitter Albert Fabrega