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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is reportedly under investigation by the organisation he leads after a whistleblower alleged he interfered with the result of last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
According to BBC Sport, a report has been submitted by an FIA compliance officer to the governing body’s ethics committee that alleges Ben Sulayem intervened to overturn a penalty given to Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
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ESPN has contacted the FIA for comment on the matter.
The investigation relates to a 10-second penalty given to Alonso at the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix that initially dropped him from third place to fourth after the chequered flag but was overturned several hours later.
The penalty was issued after Alonso’s Aston Martin team was judged to have carried out work on his car as he served a separate five-second penalty for being out of position in his grid box at the start of the race.
The ten-second penalty was issued shortly after Alonso had received his third-place trophy on the podium and dropped him to fourth in the classification.
The reason for penalty centred around video footage that showed the rear jack — one of two devices used to hoist the car into the air at pit stops to change tyres — touched the car before the five-second penalty had been served.
The stewards initially deemed this to be a breach of a rule that states team members are not allowed to start work on the car until a time penalty has elapsed.
Aston Martin appealed the decision and was granted a right to review on the basis that there were seven previous examples of a jack touching a car while a penalty was being served that had not been penalised.
In the early hours of the morning after the race, the same stewards who had issued the original 10-second penalty reversed their decision and released the final race classification showing Alonso back in third position.
A BBC report on Monday stated that a whistleblower now alleges that Ben Sulayem called Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the FIA’s vice-president for sport for the Middle East and North Africa region, and made it clear that he believed Alonso’s penalty should be revoked.
The BBC report added that the ethics committee is expected to issue its report in four to six weeks.