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.”
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2021 Turkish Grand Prix
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banana88x (@banana88x)
10th October 2021, 17:22
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.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th October 2021, 18:31
same clash, same penalty, what is wrong with that?
pastaman
10th October 2021, 21:23
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.
Denis (@denis1304)
11th October 2021, 10:52
@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.
MSO
10th October 2021, 18:37
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!!
Warheart (@warheart)
11th October 2021, 8:03
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:
Article 2 (d) says:
So yeah, the stewards can impose any penalty, including disqualifying a driver.
MSO
11th October 2021, 8:59
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.
John H (@john-h)
10th October 2021, 21:20
The 5 seconds, it’s a… (sorry everyone).
rodewulf (@rodewulf)
10th October 2021, 23:13
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.