The penalty for Alonso, “difficult to accept” for Laurent Rossi
Doubly penalized, Fernando Alonso dropped out of the points after the Miami Grand Prix, despite finishing in eighth place. A decision that frustrated Laurent Rossi, the CEO of Alpine, who regrets not being able to plead his driver's case sufficiently.
Weekends follow one another and are similar for Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard seems to be plagued by bad luck in the early part of the season and has only managed to score points once in Bahrain (9th place). Since then, the Asturian Bull has been hit with retirements (in Jeddah and Imola) and unexpected breakdowns (in qualifying in Melbourne) without being truly at fault.
But in Miami, if the double world champion didn’t score any points, it’s entirely his fault. Alonso received a first penalty of 5 seconds after missing a braking point and crashing into Pierre Gasly. “An error that he admitted just after the race.” If the Frenchman abandoned a few laps later after a contact with Lando Norris, the Spaniard continued and crossed the finish line in eighth position.
Only in the final laps, the Alpine driver bypassed the difficult sequence of turns 15 and 16, which the race direction considered an advantage gained over his pursuers. As a result, Alonso received a new 5-second penalty added retrospectively, causing him to lose 3 positions and ultimately finish 11th, just outside the points. His teammate, Esteban Ocon, who started from last, managed to recover his eighth place.
The decision of the race management has somewhat frustrated the Alpine board. Laurent Rossi, the CEO of the French team, expressed himself on social media.
“A disappointing penalty imposed on Fernando after the race for leaving the track and gaining an advantage means that our six points at the checkered flag have turned into four points, and it cost us a double entry into the points,” explains Laurent Rossi.
(This penalty) is certainly difficult to accept since Fernando gave back the time during the lap and we were not able to present the evidence to clarify the specific situation before the penalty was issued. With the opportunity to explain, we are very confident that Fernando would have kept his eighth place, continues the French speaker.
We will leave again next weekend to Spain, where we are determined to achieve a much smoother and fairer race weekend, and to demonstrate the true potential of our package.
With this new setback, Fernando Alonso only has two points and ranks sixteenth in the championship. However, Esteban Ocon’s 24 points, who is ninth in the standings, allow Alpine to retain its sixth place in the constructors’ championship.
