FIA’s Last-Minute Sanction Looms: Major Penalty to Hit Top F1 Driver in Upcoming Grand Prix, Shaking Up the Championship Battle and Raising Questions About Stewards’ Timing
An F1 star is facing a hefty penalty the next time they step into a car at a race weekend.
Valtteri Bottas will start five places back from wherever he qualifies if and when he makes it back into a race seat, after an incident at his final race for Sauber in Abu Dhabi last year.
The Finn collided heavily with Kevin Magnussen before retiring from the race, meaning that the stewards were forced to push his penalty down the road to his next race – which, at time of writing, has not happened.
The penalty was handed out to be ‘the equivalent of a drive-through penalty’ and came tied to three penalty points, which eagle-eyed readers may notice is a more severe penalty than Max Verstappen’s ten-second time penalty for ramming George Russell last weekend at the Spanish GP.
Bottas still keen on F1 race return
Bottas has been linked recently with Alpine thanks to their impending move to Mercedes power units, either to replace Franco Colapinto or Pierre Gasly, as well as Cadillac as they look to fill both of their vacant seats for their 2026 entry into the sport.
While the penalty would be irritating for Bottas’ first race with any team that snaps him up, it’s not severe enough to be a dealbreaker in anything other than a one-off race scenario, replacing a banned or injured driver.
The FIA’s statement on the penalty at the time read: “Car 77 was on the inside of Car 20 on the approach to Turn 6, misjudged his braking significantly and collided with Car 20 which was entering the corner on the regular racing line.
“As Car 77 retired from the race, the Steward determine that a grid drop is warranted which is the equivalent of a drive-through penalty and three penalty points are warranted due to the significant misjudgement of the driver.”
