Alfa Romeo wants FIA consistency after Zhou Saudi F1 penalty call

F1 race director Niels Wittich told teams before the Bahrain GP that henceforth there will be no requests from race control telling drivers to give a place back for gaining an advantage by going off track.

Instead it will be up to the team and driver to make their own call within a lap of the incident.

The issue didn’t arise in the Bahrain GP itself, but in Jeddah Zhou went off track early in the race after completing a passing move on Alex Albon.

The Chinese driver had earlier dropped to the back of the field at the start after contact with Daniel Ricciardo triggered anti-stall on his car.

It was while recovering that he passed Albon into Turn 1, before running across the inside of Turn 2.

Zhou immediately asked his engineer if he should give back the place, and having quickly reviewed a video of the incident the team decided that he should keep it.

However shortly afterwards to the team’s surprise a message appeared on the timing screens indicating that the incident was being investigated, and inevitably the standard five-second penalty was subsequently applied.

The stewards noted that in running wide after passing Albon, Zhou had “gained a lasting advantage and remained ahead of car 23. The advantage was not negated by giving the position back at the earliest available opportunity or at all.”

Zhou’s day was then made worse because the front jack man touched the car while the time penalty was being served before the tyres were changed, thus in effect nullifying it.

Guanyu Zhou, Alfa Romeo F1 Team

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

As a result the penalty was deemed to have not been served, and Zhou was told to serve an extra drive through penalty on his way to an eventual 11th place.

“He had a good start but had contact with