Call to review Alonso’s Chinese GP penalty rejected

Aston Martin’s petition for a right to review the penalty given to Fernando Alonso in the Sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix has been rejected. Alonso was penalized for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz late in the Sprint in Shanghai, earning a time penalty and three penalty points that put him half way to a race ban. Aston Martin lodged a petition for the right to review the penalty earlier this week, meaning it had to prove there was a “significant and relevant new element which was unavailable to the party seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned”. The hearing took place via videoconference on Friday morning as it involved stewards from the previous race who are not in Miami, and Aston Martin submitted that the “significant and relevant new element” was the forward-facing camera view from Alonso’s car, that was unavailable to the team and the stewards at the time of the original decision. While the stewards agreed that the footage was new and unavailable at the time, they did not feel it met the threshold of being significant, because “while it showed the incident from a different angle, it added nothing material to the visual perspective that we already had”. As a result, the request was dismissed and the penalty points stand. Alonso was critical of FIA stewarding prior to the decision being made public on Saturday night, as he stated “I do feel that nationality matters” when it comes to penalties being given to drivers, following his comments that Lewis Hamilton would not be penalized for his role in an incident at the start of the Sprint in Miami “because he’s not Spanish”.