Mark Webber has landed himself a 10-place grid penalty for Korea after flagging down Fernando Alonso after the end of the Korean GP.
Webber, who retired from the race on the last lap, was given a lift back to the pits by the Ferrari driver.
However the Aussie received a reprimand because “he went onto the track without the permission of the marshals.” Because he already has two reprimands he now earns an automatic 10-place penalty for the next race.
Alonso meanwhile also received a reprimand because he “drove the car in a manner which could be deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers or to any other person.”
While the reprimands seemed harsh at first given it was a nice example of camaraderie – and made for great TV – CCTV footage subsequently released to the media by the FIA showed that if anything both drivers were lucky to get away so lightly.
Webber can be seen sprinting from the end of the escape road to the track where he flags down Alonso, who stops and forces the closely following Kimi Raikkonen to swerve in avoidance. Other cars also had to take action when they found the Ferrari stationary on the racing line as Webber climbed aboard.
As an aside there was a major accident on the slowing down lap of today’s GP2 race when a lapped Alex Rossi slowed to turn into the paddock back gate and was hit hard by third place Fabio Leimer, who like the other podium finishers was under instructions to head on round to the pits for the post race ceremony…
Adam Cooper F1 
Though he broke the rules, this was a welcome piece of ‘showbiz’ in a dull year for F1. I’ll take a bet that Bernie will get involved in this…
I don’t think Webber will be too bothered about this. He’s had enough & is ready for the end of the season, between now & then I think he’ll start to speak his mind a bit more. Ferrari can shrug off Alonso’s 1st reprimand and joke that unreliable Red Bull needed a lift from a Ferrari.
Don’t the three reprimands have to involve driving offences to result in a grid drop? Is this a driving penalty for Webber?
Webber hasn’t been one of my favourite drivers the past few years, Alonso has, but that was unnecessary. Mark’s done so much for F1 and it’s his last season. Reprimand Alonso and let Webber off with a shake of the finger (no Vettel pun intended), rules be damned.
Boys will be boys, Mark would have hunted down Kimi, good driving by the top boys as per usual, Nico and Lewis couldn’t touch him last night 🙂
It is undeniably self-evident that a 19-place grid penalty for Frenando Alonslow in each of the remaining six races would have been far more appropriate.
I think the penalty is fair; this is a third offense for Webber, the stewards rightly serious about this; they’ve had a marshal killed this year, as well as having an incident in the GP2 cool down lap shows that this is not arbitrary. Webber has been been struck by a car while he was on a bicycle, and has served as president of the GPDA- he knows better than this, don’t feel sorry for him.
Spot on, I think.
Alonso stopping on the course put more people at risk than what Webber did and received no penalty.
Reprimands seem to only achieve something after a driver accumulates three, so where is the common-sense in that?
And F1 fans think NASCAR is a joke. So do I, but F1 is running a v close second.
Alonso received a reprimand, same as Mark, but he hadn’t screwed up twice earlier in the year. In football players get sent off if they accumulate two yellow cards. Where is the sense in that? In other words getting one yellow card is meaningless – unless you get another one. Not a very logical argument…