The platform is gone! Subsequent penalty against Fernando Alonso in Jeddah

(Motorsport-Total.com) – Fernando Alonso later lost his third pole position at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix! The Spanish player receives a 10-second penalty for incorrectly taking the five-second penalty. As a result, the Aston Martin driver fell to fourth behind George Russell.

Alonso received a kick-off penalty for not being in the starting area properly. He then served the next five-second time penalty under the safety car during the pit stops. However, the Spaniard’s car may have been worked on too early, so he received another ten-second time penalty.

It can be seen that the mechanic put the jack on the car before the five seconds had elapsed. It is similar to the incident of last year’s Alonso teammate Esteban Ocon (Albin), who was tried for the same crime in Bahrain. The mechanic touched the car there too early, which is why the Frenchman also received a ten-second time penalty.

Regulation 54.4 d) states: “While a car is stopped in the pit lane as a result of incurring a penalty pursuant to Regulations 54.3 a) or 54.3 b) above, it may not be worked on until the car is stationary for the duration of the penalty.”

This means that “no work may be done” on the car during the penalty. The question is whether the jack implementation is considered “working”.

“This was a technical foul, as we have already seen at the Ocon in Bahrain,” said Mercedes Motorsport director Toto Wolff. “Jack goes to the car. Now we have to discuss whether the punishment is right if the thing only touches her. We should probably change that, but of course we benefit in this case.”

“We saw it relatively quickly, we ran the video up and down, but it wasn’t quite clear whether or not there was a penalty,” Wolf says. Mercedes then ordered Russell to stay within the five-second window to take advantage of a potential penalty.

Russell missed the target by about a tenth of a second, but due to Alonso receiving a ten-second penalty instead of five, the Spaniard still trailed the Mercedes drivers. He almost fell behind Lewis Hamilton’s second Mercedes, but 0.337 seconds saved him from losing another place.

Reload: A detailed report will follow shortly at this point.