Alonso and Sainz came together at turn nine with the Aston Martin driver ending up worse off. The veteran Spaniard picked up a puncture and was forced to bring his race to a premature end, while the latter ended the sprint in P5.
However, the DNF was not punishment enough in the eyes of the stewards, who opted to give Alonso a 10-second time penalty and three penalty points for his license.
These points take Alonso’s 12-month total to six after the 42-year-old was handed three penalty points for his involvement in George Russell’s last-lap DNF in Melbourne earlier this year.
Explaining the stewards’ reasoning, an FIA document explained: “The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 14 (Fernando Alonso), the driver of Car 55 (Carlos Sainz), team representatives and reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video and in-car video evidence and determined that Car 14 caused a collision with Car 55 at Turn 9.
“The result of the collision was that Car 55 was damaged and that Car 14 had a puncture and retired before the end of the sprint session. As per the guidelines on driving standards, which was agreed with the teams, an infringement of this nature required that a baseline penalty of 10 seconds was to be added to the time of a car that caused a collision.”
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