Charles Pic has been given a ‘community service’ penalty after passing under red flags after the stoppage close to the end of FP3.
Pic has been ordered to appear on behalf of the FIA Road Safety campaign at some point in the future.
He has also had 20s added to his race time.
The FIA said: “Penalty of 20 seconds to be added to the driver’s race time and in addition the driver and his team engineer to perform 1 day’s Community Service for FIA Action for Road Safety campaign at the instruction of the FIA President.
“The driver and team representative conceded the breach which involved the driver passing 4 sets of red lights/flags, then overtaking another car.”
The penalty is completely without precedent but would seem to be more worthwhile than a fine. The interesting bit is that it’s at the instruction of the FIA President…

I like the idea of this type of penalty, but a penalty must be tailored to the offense not the person. How would Vettel, Alonso or Hamilton react to a penalty like this given the value of and demand for their time for sponsor commitments.