F1 News: FIA confirm penalty verdict after official PROTEST

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F1 News

FIA confirm penalty verdict after official PROTEST

The FIA have made a decision regarding Aston Martin's protest at the Chinese GP

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Saturday 20 April 2024 16:00

The FIA have reached a decision following Aston Martin's protest at the Chinese GP.

Aston Martin lodged a protest against the results of qualifying at the Chinese GP, after Carlos Sainz crashed in Q2.

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The incident brought out a red flag after the Spanish driver lost the rear end of his car and went flying into the wall leaving the car stranded.

Aston Martin are invoked Article 39.6 of the sporting regulations, which reads: "Any driver whose car stops on the track during the qualifying session or the sprint qualifying session will not be permitted to take any further part in that session."

Carlos Sainz causes a red flag during Chinese GP qualifying

FIA dismiss Aston Martin protest

Despite Sainz stopping on track the FIA have dismissed the protest as: "it was clear from the examples cited by a number of the team managers present and the FIA, that this was not how this rule was applied by the teams and the FIA in the past."

Whilst Aston acknowledged this rule had not been applied in the past, they took issue with the amount of time Sainz's car was stopped on track.

Article 39.6 states that cars are only allowed to stop on track for 30 seconds and Car 55 was on track for 1 minute 17 seconds.

After considering previous instances of cars stopping on track the Stewards decided to discard the protest because of previous incidents having passed without protest.

They stated: "In the above circumstances, taking into account the numerous examples where cars had stopped for different lengths of time and were permitted to restart and continue to participate in the session concerned, we considered that the decision taken by Race Control was not inconsistent with past practice nor in breach of Article 39.6."

FIA Aston Martin Carlos Sainz