Alfa Romeo Racing’s appeal against their penalties from the German Grand Prix will be held on 24 September, the Tuesday between the Singapore and Russian Grand Prix.
After finishing seventh and eighth at the Hockenheimring, both Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi were handed post-race thirty-second time penalties for breaching Formula 1’s clutch regulations, relegating them to twelfth and thirteenth respectively.
The appeal will be heard by the International Court of Appeal just after the conclusion of the Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit and only days ahead of the start of the Russian Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom, the two races running as a double header in 2019 at the end of September.
The first job will be to identify whether the penalties can be appealed, with Alfa Romeo claiming they have significant evidence to disprove the findings of the FIA stewards in Germany, although they have not disclosed anything about this.
“We’ve been penalised after the race, and we went for an appeal,” Alfa Romeo Sporting Director Beat Zehnder is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “Which is the normal procedure if you are [penalised] and you think you have some arguments to win, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.
“It’s an ingoing process, I can’t give you any more information. Everything will be disclosed on September 24, when the hearing takes place in Paris.”
Räikkönen felt he had quite a normal start in Germany as he profited from sluggish getaways from Red Bull Racing pair Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly to jump from fifth to third, and he does not believe it had anything to do with the clutch settings.
“I think it was a pretty normal start,” Räikkönen said to Motorsport.com. “It only made it look quite good because the Red Bulls made bad starts themselves.
“For sure if you ask them they will tell you that they made a pretty s****y start themselves. Mercedes and us were similar, so it just looked a bit better. That’s honestly nothing to do with all these things.”
Should Alfa Romeo have their penalties nullified, Haas F1 Team duo Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen will drop from seventh and eighth down to ninth and tenth respectively, while current championship leader Lewis Hamilton and Williams Racing’s Robert Kubica will lose their positions inside the points.
