Fernando Alonso calls for FIA intervention after Norris and Verstappen controversy

Fernando Alonso has called for teams to gather with the FIA to discuss an overhaul to the F1 regulations. The battle between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in Austria, as well as his own fights with Nico Hulkenberg and Zhou Guanyu, have sparked conversations about the rules applied in wheel-to-wheel combat.

When Norris and Verstappen collided while fighting for the lead of the Austrian Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver was slapped with a 10-second time penalty.

His rival also received a penalty to the tune of five seconds, although this was dished out after the battle for track limit violations earlier in the race.

The stewards’ reasoning for Verstappen’s penalty boiled down to avoidable contact with the three-time world champion accused by Norris of moving in the braking zone and failing to leave a car’s width on the outside of Turn Three.

This battled sparked plenty of debate in the paddock, opening up the conversation about what drivers can and cannot do when going wheel-to-wheel. The widely-accepted consensus was that this is now unclear following layers and layers of new rules and tweaks to the regulations from the FIA.