Fernando Alonso has dropped from sixth to eighth at the Australian GP after a 20-second penalty was imposed on him by stewards, who ruled the Spaniard had driven in "at least" a "potentially dangerous" manner in front of Mercedes’ George Russell before the Briton’s big late crash.

Following a post-race investigation which included interviews with both drivers, stewards found that telemetry data from Alonso's car showed that the Aston Martin had "lifted slightly more than 100m earlier than he ever had going into" Turn Six on the penultimate lap of the race as Russell chased him down for sixth place.

Stewards said that although they did "not have sufficient information to determine whether Alonso's manoeuvre was intended to cause Russell problems, or whether as he stated to the stewards that he simply was trying to get a better exit" on that lap, the Spaniard did "choose to do something, with whatever intent, that was extraordinary, ie lifting, braking, downshifting and all the other elements of the manoeuvre over 100m earlier than previously".

In a lengthy statement explaining its reasons for issuing the penalty, stewards decided that Alonso had ultimately contravened the regulation which states that: "At no time may a car be driven unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner which could be deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers or any other person."

Alonso was handed a 20-second time penalty for the incident in lieu of a drive-through given the race had already finished.

Alonso had finished sixth but now drops behind team-mate Lance Stroll and RB's Yuki Tsunoda in the revised classification to eighth.