{"id":348593,"date":"2025-12-15T01:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T01:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/348593\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T01:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T01:40:10","slug":"valtteri-bottas-penalty-served-in-melbourne-abu-dhabi-unserved-fia-confirms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/348593\/","title":{"rendered":"Valtteri Bottas penalty served in Melbourne Abu Dhabi unserved FIA confirms"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will not be the most smooth sailing return to the Formula 1<\/a> grid for Valtteri Bottas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his debut for Cadillac<\/a> in Melbourne, Bottas will be made to serve a five-place grid penalty slapped on him nearly a-year-and-a-half ago.<\/p>\n

Driving for Sauber in Abu Dhabi<\/a> during his final race of F1, Bottas had a collision with Kevin Magnussen and the stewards deemed the Finnish driver at fault, handing him the grid-drop penalty in 2024.<\/p>\n

READ MORE LINKS<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The stewards handed a five-place grid penalty to Valtteri Bottas. \u00a0FIA<\/p>\n

With his departure from the sport that weekend, the penalty fell into the ether of unserved driver penalties, but now it’s come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n

As Bottas re-joins the grid in Albert Park with debutants Cadillac, the FIA confirmed that the 36-year-old will need to serve the penalty in his first race back.<\/p>\n

“Currently, the penalty will stand, as there is no mechanism to retroactively amend the penalty that was applied under the regulations in force at the time,” an FIA spokesperson confirmed.<\/p>\n

\"Departing<\/p>\n

Valtteri Bottas departed the sport in 2024. \u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“The change of regulation is intended to avoid similar anomalous situations in the future.”<\/p>\n

The regulations they refer to is a line in the new regulations for 2026, that says that penalties will ‘expire’ after 12 months.<\/p>\n

“A drop of any number of grid positions at the driver’s next Sprint or Race in which the driver participates in the subsequent twelve month period.”<\/p>\n

This means that, from 2026, any driver who earns a penalty such as Bottas’ would have it wiped after 12 months have elapsed.<\/p>\n

But, no such luck for the honorary Aussie as Bottas took the penalty in 2024 meaning the five-place grid slide still stands, with no expiration date.<\/p>\n

Who else has an unserved penalty?<\/p>\n

Right now, two drivers have unserved penalties, Jenson Button and Robert Shwartzman. <\/p>\n

The Ferrari<\/a> junior Shwartzman was handed a five-place grid penalty by the Mexican Grand Prix stewards for overtaking under yellow flags during an FP1 session.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Button replaced Fernando Alonso<\/a> at the Monaco Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In 2017, Jenson Button stood in for Fernando Alonso in Monaco. \u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

During the grand prix on Sunday, he was slapped with a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision with Pascal Wehrlein.<\/p>\n

Both drivers are unlikely to ever be present on the F1 grid again to serve their penalties.<\/p>\n

Button has retired from driving altogether and is now a Sky Sports pundit and Shwartzman is an IndyCar driver with Prema Racing stateside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It will not be the most smooth sailing return to the Formula 1 grid for Valtteri Bottas. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-348593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}