Fernando Alonso, Alpine, Istanbul Park, 2021

Alonso apologises and accepts penalty after Schumacher collision

2021 Turkish Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

Fernando Alonso was left to reflect on early misfortunes in the Turkish Grand Prix, after being involved in two incidents in the first two laps.

While he was blameless in the first, with Pierre Gasly, Alonso received a five second time penalty after he hit Schumacher while trying to pass the Haas driver at turn four on lap two.

“We touched each other, unfortunately,” said Alonso. “He had the spin, and I got the penalty. I’ll take it, of course.

“I’m sorry to have the collision with him. And obviously, that happened only because I was P14. I should not be in that position.

“The luck seems to keep avoiding us this year, big time. So I guess we are accumulating a lot for next year.”

Gasly was given a five-second penalty plus two points on his license for ‘impeding Alonso at the start’. Although Alonso fumed at his rival on the radio after the incident, he was less critical afterwards.

“I think the first corner is always difficult in these conditions,” he said. “We were meeting for the first time on these wet tyres at the start all together.

“These things can happen. Unfortunately it happened today, to us, while we were [in the] top five.

“It’s frustrating, when we are not competitive, we have a boring race. And when we are competitive, we have crazy weather, crazy things happening.”

After the penalty was applied on his pit stop at lap 30, Alonso failed to gain significant ground on the drivers in front of him. He finished a lap down in 16th.

“Historically, this year, we’ve been less competitive on the intermediate tyres,” he said. “Today, the whole race was [run on] intermediates. We didn’t even put on the dry tyres.”

“So yeah, we need to improve our competitive level on that compound.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2021 Turkish Grand Prix

Browse all 2021 Turkish Grand Prix articles

9 comments on “Alonso apologises and accepts penalty after Schumacher collision”

  1. The penalty was too soft taking into account he got the same penalty as Gasly for the T1 incident.
    I was not happy with the stewarding at all this race.

    1. same clash, same penalty, what is wrong with that?

      1. It is absolutely not the same clash. Was there a 3rd car trying to go through the corner with Alonso and Schumacher on lap 1? No.

        1. @pastaman Third car has nothing to do penalty Gasly got. If Gasly avoided Alonso by going to the left and Perez hit him, than Perez would got penalty.

    2. The stewards can’t pick the severity, they apply the penalties available.

      It has nothing to do with the stewarding.

      We have this conversation yet again, I’m not sure how many different ways it needs to be explained!!

      1. You should probably read the regulations before giving an answer that’s simply not true. The ruling of the stewards say, in the “offence” line:

        Breach of Article 2 (d) Chapter IV Appendix L of the FIA International Sporting Code.

        Article 2 (d) says:

        d) Causing a collision, repetition of serious mistakes or the appearance of a lack of control over the car (such as leaving the track) will be reported to the Stewards and may entail the imposition of penalties up to and including the disqualification of any driver concerned.

        So yeah, the stewards can impose any penalty, including disqualifying a driver.

        1. Yes but when it’s a simple wheel to wheel collision resulting in a spin and lost places, they’re all going to get the same.

  2. The 5 seconds, it’s a… (sorry everyone).

  3. Alpine have partially sorted out their issues with inters for one-lap pace only, it looks like. For the race they were helpless if caught out of position, as Alonso had a miserable race stuck behind Russell (stopped, reclaimed ground and got stuck again) after those two incidents, but at least Ocon salvaged one point for the team after a good enough race, in which he took some battles and made the unusual deed of a full-distance race covered with 0 pit stops.

Comments are closed.