Fernando Alonso beat off his hundred – Newspaper Kommersant No. 48 (7493) of 03/22/2023
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The International Automobile Federation (FIA) is forced to amend its own rules regarding the departure of fines by pilots during the race. The FIA took this step because of the story that happened after the Sunday Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Immediately after the finish, the race management issued a ten-second penalty to Fernando Alonso, who finished third, which deprived the Spaniard of his place on the podium. Then it turned out that the judges were in a hurry: Alonso did not violate anything. All because of the strange ambiguity in the regulations, which the FIA and intends to eliminate by the Australian Grand Prix.
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, held on Sunday, is difficult, if we take into account purely sports aspects, to be attributed to the number of races that kept the fans on their toes until the very end. It all came down to the expected triumph of Red Bull. The champion team scored a double in a row. The first was Sergio Perez, the second was Max Verstappen, who started, by the way, from 15th place (the technical superiority of Red Bull over rivals easily allowed the Dutchman to fly from the end of the peloton to its top).
However, the most interesting part of the Saudi stage began after the finish. The third to him, as well as two weeks earlier in Bahrain, came Fernando Alonso. For the 41-year-old Spaniard, who won two world championships in the mid-2000s, it was a special result that opened his way to the super-elite club of Formula 1 drivers who managed to finish on the podium a hundred or more times in their careers. There were only five of them before Alonso – seven-time world champions Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher (191 and 155 podiums, respectively), four-time championship winners Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost (122 and 106) and Kimi Raikkonen (103). Finn only once became the world champion, but he played in Formula 1 for two decades.
But Alonso’s entry into this club turned out to be thorny. Shortly after the finish, the judges announced that he had been penalized for ten seconds, which means that he was moving to fourth place, skipping Mercedes driver George Russell to third. The reason for this decision was a violation committed by the team of the Spaniard Aston Martin, when the rider was serving a sentence for a miscalculation made at the start. Alonso incorrectly placed the car on the starting field (it should not touch the markings) and received a five-second penalty. His leader Aston Martin was serving during the pit stop. According to the rules, the team is not allowed to work with the car until it has served the penalty. That’s how it seems to have happened, and Alonso calmly returned to the track.
But later the judges saw that one of the recordings of the moment showed how the mechanic rolled the rear jack under the Spaniard’s Aston Martin before the expiration of five seconds. This was considered a violation worthy of punishment. In response, Aston Martin filed a protest, enclosing records of seven other teams serving similar sentences.
They showed that the jacks also rolled under the cars before the expiration of the sentence, but this did not entail sanctions. And in general, the presence of a jack under the car is difficult to unequivocally define exactly as work on the car.
As a result, the judges agreed with the argument that the regulations do not allow unequivocally interpreting the actions of Aston Martin mechanics as work on the car, and the fine was canceled, allowing Alonso to enter the club of the elite. Now the FIA will have to make adjustments to the regulations so that this does not happen again. The federation’s statement notes that “a request for a review of the original decision was sent to the judges during the last lap of the race” (apparently sent by the Mercedes team, which demanded that Russell go faster during the race, as Alonso faces a fine), and also emphasizes that the definition of “working with a machine” is indeed contradictory, which led to “such a special result.” The topic will be submitted for discussion by the Sports Advisory Committee, which will meet on March 23. The updated regulations should come into force no later than the Australian Grand Prix, which will be held on April 2.
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