FIA Stewards reject Aston Martin’s right of review for China Sprint

The FIA has dismissed the Aston Martin F1 team’s request for a right of review of Fernando Alonso’s 10-second penalty in the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint event.

Alonso was hit with the sanction following an incident with Carlos Sainz that occurred in the closing stages of the short-form Saturday race.

The two drivers were battling for third place when contact ensued at Turn 9 when Alonso attempted an ambitious inside pass on the Ferrari driver.

While the time penalty didn't affect the Aston Martin driver’s finishing position due to a subsequent puncture and retirement, the three penalty points added to his super licence brought Alonso's total for the past year to six, halfway towards a potential race ban.

Determined to contest the penalty, Aston Martin exercised its right to request a review, with a hearing held on Friday morning in Miami.

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However, in the presence of Ferrari representatives, the Stewards concluded that Aston Martin did not present any new significant evidence to support their case, leading them to dismiss the team’s request and uphold the original penalty.

"The alleged new element presented was a forward-facing video footage of car 14 which was unavailable to Aston Martin and the stewards at the time of the original decision - it was downloaded post the sprint session by F1," the Stewards stated.

"While the stewards had various other footage of the incident from different camera angles, they did not have this footage.

"In its written submission seeking the review, Aston Martin suggested that the new camera angle showed that the incident in question was a racing incident and not one for which their driver should be penalised.

"Even though we did not have this footage at the time we made our decision, we did not consider the footage to be a “significant” new element,” they concluded.

"The new footage would not have caused us to question our decision or otherwise give us a perspective that we did not already have of the incident.

"There was sufficient footage from other camera angles to give us a clear basis to make the decisions."

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