The Alfa Romeo F1 team was unable to cancel a penalty taken by Kimi Raikkonen at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last month.
Stewards had accepted a team request for a review at the Portuguese Grand Prix based on the emergence of new elements, but later issued a statement confirming the original sanction.
“We tried, but now they say no, so we acknowledge and move on,” Alfa’s track construction manager Xevi Pujolar told reporters on a video call.
Raikkonen was given a 30-second penalty on the Italian Imola circuit after the race was interrupted by a crash between Mercedes ‘Valtteri Bottas and Williams’ George Russell and then restarted.
The stewards had decided that the Finn should have gone into the pit lane after a turn when the safety car led the field before the restart instead of staying on the track.
Alfa Romeo said they asked for advice as the situation was unclear but the answer came back too late for them to act.
The stewards realized that there was no Formula 1 precedent for the situation Raikkonen found itself in and that a 2018 rule change introduced a “conflict of intent” between the rules for a rolling restart and the one behind the safety car.
However, they added that the penalty resulting from the violation was mandatory and the stewards had no discretion to change it.
The penalty downgraded Raikkonen from ninth to 13th place and promoted Esteban Ocon of Alpine and Fernando Alonso to ninth and tenth place respectively. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin)
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