Fernando Alonso takes a merciless dig at Carlos Sainz: Two Spaniards at loggerheads

A weekend to forget for Madrid-born Carlos Sainz at the Madrid Formula 1 race on the new Madring circuit: The Williams was simply too weak, and the driver was not beyond reproach either – held up by Bottas in practice, given a grid penalty, then a collision in the Spanish Grand Prix with, of all people, his compatriot Fernando Alonso. The race stewards responded by handing Sainz a 5-second penalty.

Alonso had to fit a new front wing in the pits and limped the battered Aston Martin home in 17th place. ‘Giving up’ is not in Fernando Alonso’s vocabulary.

Alonso, a 32-time Grand Prix winner, had nothing good to say about Sainz after his 29th F1 World Championship race on Spanish soil: “Carlos forced me into the wall. At the start he crashed into two drivers, then he forced me into the wall in the braking zone.”

“I mean, I was forced into the wall at 340, even though the whole track was clear on the left-hand side. But it’s not the first time either, so that’s just how it is. He got a penalty this time, but other times he didn’t. But anyway, it was a difficult weekend: a penalty in qualifying on Saturday, he took out Tsunoda at the start, then pushed me into the wall. That can happen when a weekend goes a bit wrong, as it did for him.”

Sainz disagrees with the penalty, but puts it into perspective: “Everything’s fine with Fernando; these are racing incidents that we’ll quickly forget. In my opinion, the penalty is unnecessary.”

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“The nature of Turn 5 practically invites contact because there’s a massive bottleneck there. There have been incidents in Formula 2 and also in Formula 3, and that section simply doesn’t allow two cars to run side by side.”

“I don’t think Fernando actually managed to get truly parallel with me in that incident. We went into that corner, made contact, he radioed in to complain and managed to get me penalised. I suppose that’s what he wanted, and it worked a treat. But we would have finished 16th anyway, so it wouldn’t have made much difference.”

Sainz continued: “On the first lap, you had to take risks to make up positions. I got off to a very good start and overtook three or four cars at the start. But then there was a lot of congestion in the first corner because many were on hard tyres at the rear, and whilst braking I lost control of the car a little and made contact with Yuki Tsunoda’s car. That damaged the underbody of the car, and from then on I was losing almost a second per lap due to a lack of downforce. I had great difficulty keeping the car on the track. In the end, I had no choice but to retire.”