Fernando Alonso has been relegated outside of the top 10 after a post-race protest from Haas at the United States Grand Prix was upheld by stewards.
Alonso finished in seventh place at the Circuit of the Americas after recovering from a mid-race accident with Lance Stroll.
But post-race Alonso, along with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, was protested by Haas.
Haas expressed its belief that the respective cars had been on track unsafely during the race owing to damage sustained.
It pointed to the three occasions this year in which Kevin Magnussen had been shown a black and orange flag for having front wing damage.
While the protest against Perez was dismissed the one against Alonso was upheld and a 10-second stop/go penalty, converted into a 30-second time drop, was issued.
As a consequence Alonso has been stripped of seventh place and drops outside of the top 10.
Haas team manager Peter Crolla “had contacted Race Control to report the issue with Car 14 on 2 occasions during the race and was told that the matter was being looked into.
“[Alan] Permane submitted that the mirror came off through no fault of their driver or team and was due to the collision caused by the driver of Car 18 [Lance Stroll]. He also submitted that at only one time during the race after the mirror fell off, was there a car behind Car 14 and that the race engineer was warning the driver of the gap to that car.
“Further, that there was a precedence in Suzuka in 2019 where the cars of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were allowed to continue with mirror problems.
“The evidence shows that Car 14 was driven firstly with the mirror flapping for a significant number of laps, then with no mirror after it fell off.
“[Jo] Bauer submitted that a flapping mirror was dangerous and it could come loose and hit another driver causing injury. Therefore this was unsafe. Mr Bauer further stated that a car needs to have two mirrors and that in his opinion, which the Stewards accept as expert opinion, the car was unsafe to be driven with a mirror missing.
“The Stewards are deeply concerned that Car 14 was not given the black and orange flag, or at least a radio call to rectify the situation, despite the two calls to Race Control by the Haas Team.
“Notwithstanding the above, Article 3.2 of the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations is clear – a car must be in a safe condition throughout a race, and in this case, Car 14 was not. This is a responsibility of the Alpine Team.
“The Stewards do not regard the Suzuka incidents from 2019 as “precedents”.”
Consequently Sebastian Vettel moves up to seventh place, ahead of Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, with AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda ninth, and Esteban Ocon inheriting the final point for Alpine.
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