Winners face crackdown on eve of Australian GP

The F1 police are in town and there’s a late rule change for the Australian Grand Prix.

Teams have been told they can no longer celebrate drivers’ victories on the pit wall in another controversial ruling by the FIA.

The sport’s governing body, which bungled the outcome of the last race in Saudi Arabia by taking four hours to award Fernando Alonso third place, has taken issue with teams climbing on the fencing.

The celebrations have long been part of the end of F1 races, but now stewards are clamping down.

It comes after they turned their attention to Lewis Hamilton’s nose stud and drivers wearing non-regulation underwear.

Ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, FIA race director Niels Wittich reminded F1 teams that climbing on the pit wall was not allowed.

In his pre-weekend event safety notes, he said “it is forbidden to climb on the pit-wall debris fence at any time”.

The FIA’s International Sporting Code states: “The pit-wall signalling platform should be forbidden to all except authorised officials or race team personnel, having a special pass.”

It adds: “It is forbidden for personnel to climb on pit-wall debris fences at any time.

“Any action by a team breaching this ban will be reported to the stewards.”

Meanwhile, the FIA has amended the rulebook after Alonso’s Aston Martin team failed to observe a time penalty.

In Jeddah, the team placed a jack under his car and then waited five seconds before working on his car.

While Alonso was eventually cleared and allowed to keep third place, the rules now say it is illegal to place a jack under the car during such instances.

Instead, they have to wait for the time penalty to be served before doing anything, including putting a jack in position.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission