Rennsport-Alonso criticizes FIA after losing 100th podium
Fernando Alonso on Sunday criticized the stewards of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix for a 10-second post-race penalty that denied him the 100th podium of his Formula One career and a second place in two races for Aston Martin. The 41-year-old double world champion wondered why it had taken so long to get sanctioned for a pit stop violation when he had served a five-second penalty more than 30 laps earlier.
“It doesn’t hurt very much to be honest,” Alonso told Sky Sports. “I was on the podium, I took pictures, I took the trophy. I celebrated with the champagne. Now I seem to have three points less. “I think it’s more of a bad FIA show today, more than one Disappointment for ourselves,” he said, citing the governing body.
“You can’t give a penalty 35 laps after the pit stop. They had enough time to really inform about the penalty. If I knew that, I would maybe 11 seconds behind the man behind. We didn’t put on a good show today.” , I think for our fans.” They only told me five seconds in the first stint and I opened seven or eight. Then in the second there was no information at all, it wasn’t even investigated.”
The original penalty was given for an incorrect starting position and the second for incorrectly serving that penalty, apparently because the rear jack touched the car before the five seconds had elapsed. That put Mercedes driver George Russell in third place, his first podium of the season, but the Brit backed his rival.
“Fernando’s punishment was tough. You deserve to be on the podium today, but I’ll take an extra trophy,” he said. “I am not complaining.” Aston Martin reviewed the incident with the stewards and team boss Mike Krack left open the possibility of an appeal.
“First we need to look at the videos of exactly what happened, so let’s do that now. So at the moment I can’t really say where this will go,” he told Sky. “The regulation says you may not be working on the car, it’s maybe a bit ambiguous but that’s something we need to look at, we have a clear procedure for that, we have a countdown and everything was absolutely safe.
“No benefit has materialized, so let’s see how that plays out.”
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
