Fernando Alonso says he disagrees with Nico Hulkenberg receiving two penalty points for forcing him off track in the Austrian GP sprint event. The par were battling for 14th place when the Haas driver forced his way past at Turn 3, with Alonso also losing out to Daniel Ricciardo as he ran wide.
After the flag Hulkenberg was handed a 10 second penalty that dropped him to 19th, but it was the points on the German’s licence that Alonso thought was an unfair call by th FIA stewards.
The Aston Martin driver had a similar experience earlier this year when he was penalised after his battle with Carlos Sainz in China.
“It was for me too optimistic for sure,” he said when asked by this writer about Hulkenberg’s move.
“But I probably disagree with the penalty points again because if we are not allowed to race or to attempt an overtaking, you can succeed, or you can make a mistake.
“And maybe you pay the price, or you have to give back the position, or if it’s the last lap of the race, there is a time penalty or whatever. But I don’t think that it was a dangerous manoeuvre.
“He was just attempting an overtake. Too optimistic, okay, but the penalty points, I still don’t get those penalties.”
Having finished 15th in the sprint after Hulkenberg’s time penalty Alonso was then 15th in Q1, and 15th again Q2.
Alonso: Poor Austria pace is no surprise
In Spain, he suggested that the following two races would also be “painful”.
Asked if Austria was worse than he predicted, he said: “No, as expected. And in Silverstone it’s going to be the same. So I can answer the Silverstone post-qualifying!”
Alonso did at least thank his team on the radio for “trying something different” after huge changes were made between the sprint and qualifying.
“We tried many different things in the car from the sprint race to qualifying,” he said. “And we changed aero parts, we changed mechanically the car, we changed the ride heights, we changed basically a lot of the stuff in the car, trying something different, also in the other car.
“So we have plenty of data and plenty of things to analyse. And unfortunately, the positions are more or less in the same place. So fundamentally, we lack pace in the car, we lack a little bit of a speed and efficiency.
“With the tools we have on track, just thanks the team because they’ve been flat out since the chequered flag this morning. They had, like, two minutes to have lunch, so it was a tremendous job, but with no reward, probably.”
Asked if he preferred the track with gravel traps in key places, he said: “I think so. I think we should be happy with these solutions. I don’t think that we had to wait too much to see who is in pole, who is not, to review the laps and things like that.
“So it’s much straightforward like that. So yeah, I think, all in all, positive feedback.”
