Both Fernando Alonso and George Russell have backed Pierre Gasly after the Frenchman was handed a time penalty and two penalty points to his Superlicence for speeding under a red flag during Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.
The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver was off the back of the pack behind the safety car after being forced to pit for a new front wing after making contact with an advertising board on lap one, and he was clocked to have exceeded 250 kilometres per hour on the back straight.
BWT Alpine F1 Team driver Alonso, who Gasly will replace at the Enstone-based team in 2023, said the drivers know when they are in control of their car, and the Frenchman was not really doing anything wrong as he attempted to catch back up to the rest of the field.
“Totally supporting Pierre,” Alonso is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “We are in the car, we know the speed we are doing, we know when we are in control.
“What we don’t expect is to see a tractor on the circuit, so that’s something that nothing to blame Pierre.”
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s Russell was in agreement, with the British driver saying that there isn’t a true rule to dictate how fast you can go under a red flag.
He also said that in a world where a Formula 1 car can go in excess of 330 kilometres per hour, 250 kilometres per hour isn’t really classed as high speed, something that the official release from the FIA for Gasly’s penalty said it was.
“There’s no rule which states how fast you have to go,” Russell said to Motorsport.com. “You have to respect your VSC delta, but if you’re 10 seconds too slow within your delta, you’ve got the right to speed up to bring that back down to zero.
“And that’s what drivers do, because the only way to warm our tyres is to back off, get the delta positive, and then go a bit quicker to put some energy into the tyres.
“There’s talks of him doing 250 km/h. I think people are forgetting these F1 cars go 330 km/h. And 250 km/h in our world isn’t high speed.”
