The Asturian will start eighteenth and will also receive a two-point penalty
The incident with his teammate took place at the start of the sprint race and left the Spaniard with no options
Long and complicated day for Fernando Alonso in the Brazilian GP. The Spaniard suffered an accident at the start of the sprint race caused by his teammate Esteban Ocon and was called shortly after to discuss the matter with the stewards.
After the meeting, the FIA communicated that penalizes the Spaniard with five seconds and two sanction pointsn. In this way, he will start eighteenth and not fifteenth as he had classified. Quite a blow for the Asturian who was looking for this appointment to close the gap with Ocon in the drivers’ world championship.
“The Stewards listened to the driver of Car 14 (Fernando Alonso), the driver of Car 31 (Esteban Ocon), the team representative and have reviewed the video and telemetry evidence. Alonso started to overtake Car 31 at Turn 15. The team noted that Ocon was lapping unusually slowly due to aerodynamic damage from the Turn 4 incident. However, the stewards determined through telemetry that Ocon was going at similar speeds to other cars at the same point on the track and that they had no slipstream. Alonso, however, was significantly quicker because he had the slipstream and, as he admitted in the meeting, he misjudged the moment to get away from him a bit and hit Ocon from behind. His front wing hit Ocon’s rear tire. The stewards determined that Alonso was entirely to blame for the collision, and that at those speeds and in that part of the track it was dangerous,” reads the statement issued by the FIA:
Alonso and Ocon touched twice on the first lap of the sprint race, forcing the Spaniard to pit to change the front wing, and at the end of the test, the two pilots were called to testify before the stewards for that incident. After listening to both, the stewards decided that the fault of the second touch was the fault of the Oviedo, who received the sanction.
Alonso was very angry with his partner although in subsequent statements he took the matter down.
Ocon also defended himself. “What happened on the first lap was a disgrace. I was trying to attack the McLarens, I took the line at (turn) 4 and Fernando (Alonso) came out of nowhere from outside,” explained the Frenchman in statements to the media. Formula One officials.
“So we touched, and from there my career was pretty much over.“, he added.