Fernando Alonso hits out at “over regulated” F1: “We’re taking away the incentive..”

Fernando Alonso believes F1 is too “over regulated” and is forcing the drivers to take less risks when attempting to overtake.

Alonso was handed a 10-second time penalty for running into Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu in the middle of Turn 3.

The topic of penalties and racing has been a hot topic in the wake of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris’ intense duel at the Austrian Grand Prix.

When speaking to media at Silverstone, where Crash.net are in the paddock, Alonso explained why everyone needs to find a better “solution” to the current situation in terms of rules.

“Yeah I think what I said now is we try to prevent dangerous drivers taking penalties every two or three weekends and putting in danger people and in the past and I think this was back when Grosjean had the accident in Spa with Lewis and myself involved, and maybe it was a race ban in Monza that year,” he said.

“So now I think we never had so many rules as we have now we cannot overtake on the pit lane, we cannot go fast on the pit lane, we cannot go slow on track, we cannot do basically anything. 

“This is probably overregulated and drivers we see or we feel frustrated sometimes, teams as well, but we need to find a solution between all of us, we cannot leave the FIA alone on this.

“We need to propose something that is better than the current rule. And this is something that we need to do between all of us.”

Alonso also questioned the implementation of penalty points and the impact they’re having on drivers potentially going for overtakes on track.

“I think when penalty points were introduced it was to avoid dangerous drivers to keep accumulating penalties without a race ban or something, just to avoid dangerous manoeuvres and putting anyone in danger on track," he explained. "I think now we are mistaking racing mistakes with dangerous driving. I made a racing mistake in Turn 3 and I hit Guanyu Zhou and I deserved a 10 second penalty. I think Nico made racing mistake, and you pay the price - or you give back the position or you have a penalty, five second or ten second. 

"A racing mistake always will happen and it did happen in the past. What I don’t get is the danger involved in those manoeuvres, because there is no danger. This is just… we are taking away the incentive to try an overtaking manoeuvre. 

"Because if you make a racing mistake you will get penalised with penalty points so it’s better sometimes to stay behind, because they are just promoting only DRS overtakings because you cannot make an attempt to pass anyone because it will be penalty points for one of the two drivers. So this is, for me, wrong."