AUSTIN, Texas — Fernando Alonso has been relegated from seventh to 15th at the U.S. Grand Prix following a protest from rival team Haas.
Alonso turned in a memorable performance in Austin after being sent airborne in a collision with Lance Stroll on lap 22, which left his car damaged. He recovered to finish seventh on track.
Twenty-five laps after that Stroll collision, Alonso’s right wing mirror came loose from the car as he was overtaking Haas driver Kevin Magnussen.
Haas protested the damaged mirror as they felt the FIA should have shown Alonso the black and orange flag which denotes a driver must pit to fix a damaged car.
Magnussen has been shown the flag on three occasions this year – in Canada, Hungary and Singapore. On all three occasions Haas and the Danish driver felt the flag was unnecessary and ruined their race.
The stewards agreed Alonso should have been shown similar, giving him a retrospective 30 second time penalty – the equivalent of serving a 10-second stop-go penalty in race conditions. With Alonso dropping out of the points, Sebastian Vettel moves up to seventh, Magnussen up to eighth, Yuki Tsunoda to ninth and Alonso’s teammate Esteban Ocon up to 10th.
Alonso’s car had been repaired at a pit stop immediately following the Stroll incident, but the stewards deemed it had been released back out to the race track in an unsafe condition.
Alpine argued in the hearing that there was only ever one car behind Alonso when the mirror was loose and that the team was advising the two-time world champion of the gaps throughout.
They also pointed to a previous incident where Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were allowed to drive on without a mirror at the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix. However, the FIA said the mirror had been flapping around for several laps before falling off.
FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer said the mirror could have hit another driver.
The FIA verdict said the stewards were “deeply concerned” Alonso was not given the black and orange flag during the race.
Haas also protested Red Bull’s Sergio Perez after the race for a similar reason. Perez lost a front wing endplate several laps after colliding with Valtteri Bottas in the opening minute of the race.
However, the FIA stewards dismissed the protest on Perez’s car, disagreeing that the endplate had been dangerous.
On that protest, the verdict said: “Mr Bauer explained that after the end plate had fallen off, Red Bull had contacted him and sent him detailed photos of the front wing.
“Mr Bauer determined that the car was not in an unsafe condition.”