FIA president under investigation for allegedly interfering over F1 race result

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is under investigation for allegedly interfering over a F1 race result.

The BBC have claimed that a whistleblower told the FIA that Ben Sulayem intervened to overturn a penalty given against Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso at the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The publication added that the claim is in a report by an FIA compliance officer to its ethics committee.

Ben Sulayem and the FIA have not responded to the BBC's requests for comment.

SPORTbible have also contacted Ben Sulayem and the FIA for comment.

The whistleblower's allegations is that Ben Sulayem called Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamas bin Isa Al Khalifa, the FIA's Middle East and North Africa vice-president for sport, and made it clear he thought Alonso's penalty should be revoked.

Alonso was given a 10-second penalty for work done on his car, having earlier received a five-second penalty for placing his car partially outside his starting box on the grid for the race.

The second penalty saw Alonso drop from third place, behind Red Bull drivers Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen - to fourth, behind Mercedes' George Russell. The subsequent withdrawal of the ten point penalty saw Alonso return to a podium position.

At the time, the stewards referred to a discussion that had taken place between the F1 teams and the FIA on the subject of working on cars while serving a penalty in the pits as the reason for the deduction.

Alonso was initially handed a ten point penalty having also been dealt a five point penalty (Getty)

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."

The BBC alleged that the whistleblower reported that Ben Sulayem "pretended the stewards to overturn their decision to issue" the penalty to Alonso.

The ethics committee is thought likely to take four to six weeks to issue its report.