FERNANDO ALONSO CALLS FOR FIA INTERVENTION AFTER NORRIS AND VERSTAPPEN CONTROVERSY

Fernando Alonso has called for teams to gather with the FIA to discuss an overhaul to the F1 regulations. The battle between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in Austria, as well as his own fights with Nico Hulkenberg and Zhou Guanyu, have sparked conversations about the rules applied in wheel-to-wheel combat.

When Norris and Verstappen collided while fighting for the lead of the Austrian Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver was slapped with a 10-second time penalty.

His rival also received a penalty to the tune of five seconds, although this was dished out after the battle for track limit violations earlier in the race.

The stewards' reasoning for Verstappen's penalty boiled down to avoidable contact with the three-time world champion accused by Norris of moving in the braking zone and failing to leave a car's width on the outside of Turn Three.

This battled sparked plenty of debate in the paddock, opening up the conversation about what drivers can and cannot do when going wheel-to-wheel. The widely-accepted consensus was that this is now unclear following layers and layers of new rules and tweaks to the regulations from the FIA.

Addressing his concerns at Silverstone, Alonso said: "Now I think it's... we never had so many rules as we have now. We cannot overtake on the pit lane, we cannot go fast in the pit lane, we cannot go slow on track. We cannot do basically anything. This is probably over-regulated and drivers, we feel frustrated sometimes... teams as well.

"But we need to find a solution between all of us. We cannot leave the FIA alone on this. We need to propose something that is better than the current rule, and this is something that we need to do between all of us."

Alonso was mired in his own controversial battles in Austria too. The Spaniard was on the receiving end of an aggressive move from Hulkenberg in the sprint race with the Haas driver collecting a 10-second time penalty as a result.

Then, in the Grand Prix, an ambitious move on Zhou at Turn Three ended with heavy contact. With the tables turned, the two-time world champion was hit with his own 10-second penalty, and two penalty points were added to his license - a source of immense frustration for the Aston Martin driver, who highlighted this as another area that the FIA needs to overhaul.

2024-07-04T16:56:00Z dg43tfdfdgfd