FIA boss Mohammed Ben Sulayem under investigation – report،
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is reportedly under investigation by the organization he leads after a whistleblower alleged he interfered with Grand Prix results from Saudi Arabia last year.
According to BBC Sport, a report has been submitted by an FIA compliance officer to the governing body's ethics committee, alleging that 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 is into a 10-second penalty given to Alonso during the 2023 Saudi Grand Prix, which initially dropped him from third to fourth place after the checkered flag, but which was overturned several hours later later.
The penalty was handed out 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 at the start of the race.
The ten-second penalty was handed out shortly after Alonso received his third-place podium trophy and dropped him to fourth in the standings.
The reason for the penalty centered on video footage showing the rear jack – one of two devices used to lift the car into the air during pit stops to change tires – hit the car before the penalty of five seconds have been served.
The stewards initially considered it a violation of a rule that says team members are not allowed to start work on the car until a time penalty occurs. has expired.
Aston Martin appealed the decision and was granted a right of review on the grounds that there were seven previous examples of a jack touching a car while a penalty was being served which had not been penalized.
Early the morning after the race, the same stewards who had imposed the initial 10-second penalty reversed their decision and released the final race standings showing Alonso back in third.
A BBC report on Monday said a whistleblower now alleges that Ben Sulayem called Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, FIA vice-president for sport for the Middle East and North Africa, and made it clear that he believed Alonso's sanction should be revoked.
The BBC report adds that the ethics committee is expected to publish its report in four to six weeks.
