Rule Alonso broke is needed despite “painful” penalty

Max Verstappen sympathised with Fernando Alonso after he was penalised for lining up incorrectly at the start of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

However the Red Bull driver said the rule Alonso broke, which was revised before the start of the new season, is necessary.

Alonso failed to line up correctly within his grid position at the start of the race. The stewards noted “the contact patch of the car’s left front tyre was outside of the starting box.”

A change to the rules on starting positions during the off-season states drivers must position their cars between the lines on either side of their grid markings. Esteban Ocon was caught out by the revised rule in Bahrain and given the same five-second time penalty as Alonso.

Verstappen agreed it was a tough call for the Aston Martin driver, but said the rule has to be enforced to prevent drivers lining their cars up far out of position.

“I haven’t seen how much he was out of his box,” said Verstappen. “It is painful when it happens, but it’s a bit the same with with the white line with track limits. Sometimes you argue did you gain anything in going wide or not, going outside of it.

“I think at one point we do need a rule. It looks really silly if people start to take advantage of going really left and right.”

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He said the rule is tough to follow because the cockpit dimensions of Formula 1 cars make it difficult to position them accurately. “I don’t know what we can do better,” Verstappen admitted. “The visibility is just really poor in the car that is I think probably the main issue why you end up sometimes not fully correctly in your box.”

Alonso’s woes multiplied when the stewards decided he had not served his penalty correctly and gave him a further 10-second sanction. That cost him third place to George Russell, who believes Alonso was treated too harshly by the stewards.

“I understand why these rules are there,” he said. “At the end of the day we’ve got to stick within the guidelines.

“But I think a little bit of common sense needs to be shown. Ultimately I think it was a bit to the left. Was that right? He gained nothing from this, perhaps five seconds was too much.

“Then with regards to his pit stop, again, I don’t know what happened and why he received a further penalty exactly. But a 10 seconds is too extreme in that case, again. So I’m not…