In his pursuit of a review of driving standards guidelines, Fernando Alonso claims that he has the full support of FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem.

It isn't only the Spaniard who has been hit with some questionable penalties in recent times, with drivers, team boss and fans all feeling that there is an increasing lack of consistency.

Alonso was particularly irked when no further action was taken over Lewis Hamilton following the first corner incident during the Miami Sprint while the Spaniard was penalised for incidents in both the Australian Grand Prix and the Shanghai Sprint.

In Melbourne Alonso had 20s added to his elapsed time (and 3 penalty points) for "potentially dangerous" driving, which led to the clash with George Russell, while in China he was hit with another 10s time penalty (and a further 3 penalty points) for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz.

While the Miami stewards felt that the first corner incident began with the two Aston Martin drivers, "the sudden and fast arrival of Car 44 (Hamilton) contributed to the various collisions". However, the stewards were not able to identify one or more drivers wholly or predominantly to blame for the various collisions or any one of them, consequently no further action was taken.

This led to Alonso claiming an anti-Spanish bias among the stewards, the two-time world champion insisting that the Mercedes driver escape punishment because he is not Spanish.

Over the Miami weekend Alonso spoke at length to the FIA president, and came away feeling that he has his support.

"I spoke with him and he's always on board on every opinion that the drivers have," said the Spaniard. "He has always listened to us," he added. "He knows that we are the ones driving the cars and that we can have some suggestions on things.

"There are a couple of points that we need to address as a sport, so let's see if we make F1 a better sport and a little bit more consistent."

The FIA is understood to be working on a new set of driver guidelines with preliminary talks having already taken place with the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA) - essentially the F1 drivers' union - over such things as track limits, overtaking and defensive driving, all of which have led to controversial decisions in the past.

As the stewards continue to crack down on some offences, with time penalties becoming more and more common, the likes of (Aston Martin team boss) Mike Krack welcome the move as long as there is consistency.

"There's two elements," he said. "One is obviously we want consistent judgements. But on the other hand we've also introduced new guidelines for this season and sometimes maybe we get stuck in the way we've been driving before.

"Sometimes you think they should be more consistent, but depending on which end you are, obviously there's a different interpretation of consistency.

"I think everybody wants consistency," he added. "Everybody should look over the guidelines, including ourselves, and then we take a fresh start."

It is hoped that the new guidelines will be in place for the start of the 2025 season.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by kenji, 15/05/2024 10:55

"I'm a great supporter of Moto GP's solution to penalties and that's by way of the 'long lap'. I really can't think of any valid reason that would preclude F1 adopting the same solution. The long lap has to be taken within three laps [ i think ] and failure to do that attracts a second long lap!! It a great solution and it can be carried out in situ. This solves the post race problem by making pretty damn sure that the end result is very rarely altered with post race adjustments."

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2. Posted by kenji, 15/05/2024 2:16

"IMO you'll never get consistency in rule interpretation so long as there is any ambiguity in the written word. To allow any grey areas just muddies the waters. To ensure consistency, rules should be black and white with minimum allowance for subjective analysis. The minute you introduce 'context' you are in trouble. I'm not saying that this is what should be implemented per se, just looking at it from the outside. I'm also of the opinion that breaches of the rules should be implemented and served within a minimum arbitrary time 'during' the race. Watching Magnussen at the last race was a joke and should never have been allowed to proceed. As for the stewards, well that's another question altogether and not easily solved. Bias can very rarely ever be totally elimininated, minimised, yes, but totally ....no."

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3. Posted by Spindoctor, 14/05/2024 8:54

"@Celtic Tiger
Spot--on analysis. I hadn't thought through the "cascade" effect of bad decisions. Given the subjective character of many "rules" it means that some bad decisions set a precedent which is then brought up every time a driver feels he can get one over on an opponent in races.
It's childish & boorish & is the F1 equivalent of footballers surrounding the Ref & demanding that X be penalised for some real or imagined offence. I find this unsporting & demeaning, but I guess its all grist to the DTS mill...."

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4. Posted by Celtic Tiger, 14/05/2024 3:05

"Its a many pronged issue. The current thing I see is that a garbage decision sets the tone and standard for the consistency calls down the grid. They say things like so-and-so got 10 sec. last race for doing X to Y, the next race a more reasonable 5 sec. penalty is applied for the same action and the aggrieved call foul and say its inconsistency.

Yes, we need consistency but for good judgment. The current stewards are a mixed bag of awful. Bias judgements (not just against Spanish), egos on power trips and too many robots up in the booth who can't apply context to the rule violations in question at the time. If we had a half-dozen of permanent, trained and critical thinking individuals as race stewards we would have better consistency even with poorly written rules."

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5. Posted by Spindoctor, 13/05/2024 14:00

"Anti-Spanish bias? - cobblers
Inconsistent application of often vague & subjective rules - absolutely right, but I fear that one set of bad rules will be replaced by additional and worse ones!"

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Alonso has backing of FIA president over rules consistency

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