Hamilton and Sainz demoted as eight drivers receive post-race penalty

F1 Grand Prix, GP Austria, Red Bull Ring

Following a protest from the Aston Martin Team, race stewards decided to hand out further penalties after a review into track limits abuses at the F1 Austrian Grand Prix. F1Technical's senior writer Balázs Szabó reports from Spielberg.

Aston Martin lodged a protest over the provisional classification shortly after today's Austrian Grand Prix in which several drivers were given penalties for track limits violations.

Following a meeting between the FIA and Aston Martin in which Ferrari's Diego Ioverno also took part, the protest has been upheld by the stewards. The governing body acknowledged that 1200 plus potential track limit violations emerged during the 71-lap race with the stewrds having been unable to monitor the entire situation.

FIA then launched a review into the track limits abuses and handed out additional penalties for exceeding track limits. A total of eight post-race penalties have been handed out with all of them having been added to the elapsed race time, changing the result.

Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant have all received 10-second time penalties, while Yuki Tsunoda has a five-second penalty. Furthermore, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon has received a total 30-second time penalty, with Nyck de Vries picking up 15 seconds.

As a result of this post-race penalty, Sainz has dropped two places to sixth in the final classification, meaning the Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso move up the order to P4 and P5 respectively. The Spaniard has already been given a five-second penalty during the race, which he served at his second pitstop.

Lewis Hamilton has been handed out a five-second penalty during the race which he served at his first pit stop, but he has been now given a second time penalty, this time a 10-second one. His post-race penalty sees him drop a position to P8, swapping places with his team mate George Russell.

Following his 10-second post-race penalty, Gasly drops a place to P10, with Lance Stroll benefitting from the Frenchman's demotion as he rises up to P9. Despite being outside the point-scoring zone anyway, Ocon loses further positions with the Alpine driver dropping from P12 to P14. Albon and Sargeant keep their respective P11 and P13 finishes.

AlphaTauri drivers also lose places with De Vries falling from P15 to P17, while his team mate Tsunoda drops from P18 to P19.

Regarding the way the penalties have been defined, the FIA stated: "For four infringements, a 5 second time penalty; for five infringements, a 10 second time penalty. Then a “reset” has been allowed due to the excessive number of infringements. The counting of infringements restarts. After another four infringements, a 5 second time penalty will apply; after five, a 10 second time penalty."

Furthermore, the Stewards "very strongly recommend that a solution be found to the track limits situation at this circuit."

The final classification: