Mercedes GP will be appealing the penalty given to former world champion Michael Schumacher for his pass on Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso at the Monaco Grand Prix. The team has forty eight hours to register the appeal and it will be against the decision to penalize their driver and not the penalty itself for that can’t be appealed against.

Schuamcher was handed out a drive-through penalty for his move on the last lap of the race as he overtook the Ferrari just as the safety car pulled in. Since the penalty was given after the race was over, twenty seconds are added to the driver’s time and that means Schuamcher has found himself demoted to 12th from 6th, without any championship points.

The rules until last year didn’t allow overtaking under safety car, until the cars cross the finishing line, but they have been amended for this season. They state now that once the safety car is in, overtaking is allowed between the finishing line and the safety car line as well. Under that ruling Schumacher’s move is actually legal. Then why the penalty is the question.

That is because of an amendment to the new rule stating that in case of the safety car coming in on the last lap, the cars will not be allowed overtaking as per the above mentioned new rule. The cars are meant to take the chequered flag as they were and this has been done to allow the race not to finish under safety car pretext. However this leaves the door of ambiguity open as has been highlighted by the Schumacher incident. To his credit, Alonso went off the racing line at the last corner and the German didn’t really have any place to go except stick the car ahead. What happens when there is an accident, won’t cars overtake then?

As always the FIA has made news because of rules that don’t really make much sense. In the end this comes out to be the first major blunder by the race stewarts this year. And the fact that former champion and Schumacher’s ex-rival Damon Hill was the ex-racer on the panel for Monaco, things have heated up to this extent. Even if the appeal is considered, there is no way the penalty will be taken away but probably the rules will be immediately amended for future incidents. Something that should have been done beforehand and has deprived Schumacher and his fans a chance to cherish a fine performance for a second consecutive race weekend.