F1: FIA President to be investigated for alleged interference of F1 race result

Today, the BBC has come out with the news that Mohammed Ben Sulayem is under investigation for alleged attempt to interfere with the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and a penalty that was given to Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso but overturned.

An anonymous whistleblower has contacted the FIA's ethics committee about the complaint in a report that has been verified by BBC Sport. Both Sulayem and the FIA have yet to comment on the matter.

The allegation is that Sulayem directly contacted the FIA's vice-president for sport for the MENA region, and said that Alonso's 10 second penalty should be revoked.

The penalty that is being referred to is one that would have seen Alonso dropped off the podium, after the team were judged to have not served an original 5-second penalty for being outside the starting box at the start of the race. As a result, a further 10 second penalty was applied to his final race result, that pushed him down final order. However, a few hours later the stewards revoked their decision and reinstated Alonso's race result of P3.

The investigation is expected to take 4-6 weeks until we get a final explanation on what exactly happened, and what the outcome would be.