FIA president investigated in latest BLOW to F1 credibility

Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the current FIA president, is under investigation over concerns he exerted his influence over a Formula 1 race result.

The BBC report that the 62-year-old has been referred to his own organisation's ethics committee over claims from an anonymous whistleblower that he attempted to intervene to remove a penalty against Fernando Alonso.

The race in question was the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where Alonso finished third, behind the Red Bulls of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen.

Alonso had been given a five second stop-and-go penalty in the race, before being slammed with another 10 second penalty due to his team working on his car during that initial penalty being served.

However, it is being alleged that Ben Sulayem himself influenced the decision to take that second penalty away from Alonso, allowing the Aston Martin driver to finish ahead of Mercedes' George Russell and claim the final podium position.

READ MORE: Hamilton reveals thoughts on Horner investigation

Alonso podium in doubt

As it happened, Russell finished around five seconds behind Alonso, meaning it would have resulted in a third podium of the 2023 season for Russell, had the penalty have stood.

At the time, the justification given by the stewards for overturning the decision was that a discussion had taken place between teams and the FIA on the subject of working on cars while serving a penalty in the pits.

The right of review decision said: "We concluded that there was no clear agreement, as was suggested to the stewards previously, that could be relied upon to determine that parties had agreed that a jack touching a car would amount to working on the car."

However, BBC Sport are reporting that the whistleblower revealed Ben Sulayem allegedly "pretended the stewards to overturn their decision to issue" the penalty to Alonso.

READ MORE: Horner Red Bull investigation official VERDICT announced

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