Fernando Alonso, McLaren, Interlagos, 2018

Alonso: Points were “unreachable” on any strategy

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says it wasn’t possible for McLaren to score points in Brazil.

What they say

Alonso’s woes were compounded by a slow pit stop on lap 15:

It was tough today. We gambled on the strategy a little bit, we stopped very early, it didn’t work I think with the medium tyre we blistered and we were not competitive in the second part of the race.

The pit stop was not clean and smooth so we lost a lot of time there. I think overall we’ve been too slow the weekend. We didn’t have the pace to be in the top 10. Today whatever strategy, whatever ewe tried I think the points were unreachable.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Richard takes issue with Lewis Hamilton’s criticism of Formula E:

1) The statement that formula E is slower that Formula Ford is simply not true. Two seasons ago in testing at Donington Park, Buemi did 1:28.910 while the fastest Formula Ford lap is 1:31.730

2)The top speed for an FE car this year around 180pmh that is no slouch.

3) I agree that the regulations should be opened up a little bit more, especially on battery development. However, this should never be opened up to chassis/aero development. Development in these areas is already well trodden. Development costs should be focused on motor/inverter/component cooling and, in the future, batteries.

4) I also understand the reason why (even though I don’t 100% agree) with restricting development. New race series like A1 Grand Prix and Superleague Formula have gone under due to spiralling costs and is one of the reasons why the European F3 one of the few semi-open development feeder series is closing its doors this season. It makes business sense to slowly open the regulations for the longevity of the series.
Richard Shaw (@Kneegnaw)

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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43 comments on “Alonso: Points were “unreachable” on any strategy”

  1. I saw an interesting quote from Verstappen:
    “I think a penalty says enough. If the stewards give him a penalty you know who was wrong in that situation.”
    So by the same logic, I guess he’s fully accepting of his own ‘community service’ punishment.

    Also regarding Ocon’s tweet, some of the comments were “when a lap down, you don’t overtake the leader”. Those people should try watching IndyCar, where blue flags are only for information, and unlapping yourself so as to get back on the lead lap is a valid strategy.

    1. Even the steward and fia not consistent, they are human too, they made mistake too, they do made wrong decision in punishing driver too. So i guess its up to individual to decide for themselve who is at fault in V and O incident. If u think O is at fault, then he is at fault. If u think V is at fault, they V is at fault.
      To my opinion, V is at fault, he shouldnt simply just cut into O racing line cos O is already more than half car distance beside him. No matter what the fia said about O shouldnt make risky move on V because he gain nothing, or about V should let O through, its racing btw, u gain nothing but if u can go faster so just go and overtake, V still gonna gone further behind O after overtaking. Yes it is true also if V can just let O go because O faster. But btw, whatever it is, both have nothing to lose. Its called racing. Even this website called “race”fans.

    2. What Indy has to do with formula one? Indy has its own rule while f1 helps the leasing car by waving the blue flag to an slower car or a car that was going to be lapped. Indy allows the lapped car to unlapped himself by racing the leader. So your comment has nothing to do with what happened yesterday.

    3. @eurobrun Absolutely. The rules allow you to unlap yourself, there is no doubt about that at all. Consequently, you should be allowed to fight the other car that is one lap ahead of you as well. If you can unlap yourself only when the car in front of you lets you past without a fight, then it does not make much sense.

      I do not feel sympathy for Verstappen in this case. Once again he proved that he was not able to play the long game and paid the price. I also do not believe it is wise to discourage Ocon and other midfield drivers from fighting the leaders. Such opportunities are rare anyway as the gap between the top 6 and the rest is humongous. If the FIA is now effectively saying ‘you know, it is not really nice to disturb a leader while he is busy trying to win the race’, then I guess we might as well have two separate races on Sunday – one for the big six and another one for F1.5.

      1. @girts – a well-argued comment. I agree with part of it (and disagree with one point), but just wanted to call out your comment for how we should discuss this as grown ups, instead of taking potshots the way its been happening in yesterday’s opinion piece.

        1. @phylyp Thanks mate ;) Actually, it is often hard to be impartial. For instance, I can admit that Mercedes is my favourite top team (not Ferrari or Red Bull) and usually I am on the side of the drivers from smaller teams in case of doubt. Such preferences / prejudices certainly affect my views. But I believe that it is always possible to have a good discussion anyway. In other words, it does not necessarily have to be degraded to ‘haha-everyone-knows-that-you-hate-kimi’ level just because some of us like Kimi and some of us not so much.

    4. This isn’t IndyCar.

  2. I personally don’t think a female sheep will ever be able to finish in the points.
    ?
    ?
    ? If english is your mother-tongue and you can’t work this out the editor has probably seen and fixed it.

    1. Ouch, baaaad typo.

    2. @hohum @neilosjames – LOL :)

      I think Keith wool correct it once he’s woken up. He must be feeling pretty sheepish about this.

    3. Impressed that yoe know that word ;)
      @hohum.

    4. come on guys, don’t ram the point home.

      1. Why not? It’s still not fixed @frood19 ! I think Keith’s gone on the lamb.

      2. @phylyp word on the grape ovine is that he’s letting it slide……..

        (I’ll get me coat…)

        1. @frood19 – tip of the hat to you, I can’t top that :-)

          1. @phylyp I bet ewe cud ,if ewe tried

            You guys sure flocked to the occasion to ruminate the unfortunate editorial situation

          2. @uneedafinn2win – five in one? That’s a record. :-)

          3. any ramifications for having ‘five in one’?
            @phylyp, @uneedafinn2win

          4. @uneedafinn2win wins the POTD (pun of…) for being the punniest. @coldfly

          5. @frood19 @uneedafinn2win @coldfly @phylyp I goat to say, I love you, you beautiful SOBs

        2. Ye’ll get ye goat ? I don’t blaaaaame you

  3. What a sorry way to end his F1 career. I hope he returns at some point to end it in the style he deserves. Sure Alonso made some poor choices, but a driver of his calibre shouldn’t finish on this note. To me it’s clear he would’ve given Hamilton a much better fight in that Ferrari, shame that battle never quite happened.

    1. It’s quite sad to think the next race will be his last. In a way, I’m glad that its ending. It’s been hard to watch him potting around in 12th and 14th for the last couple years.

      1. And this last year us the most painful of all of them.

  4. Having not yet seen any of the race and being confused as to what actually happened between Ocon (trying to pass on the outside according to text, but on the inside in photo) and Ver, I hesitate to comment, but I have formed one opinion, Ocon being on newer and softer tyres would have felt that being held up by Ver was not only ruining his new tyres but squandering the performance advantage they so temporarily afforded him, little wonder he wanted to get by into clear air.

    1. This happened through the Senna curves. Ocon was outside of Verstappen in turn 1, which put him on the inside of turn 2

      1. Thanks, @dragon86, watched it last night and I’m pretty sure that Ocon was actually ahead very briefly and right or wrong Max was a fool to go for the apex.

  5. @hohum: Exactly as you said. Ocon was faster, had DNS on the straight went to overtake Max at turn 1. Max forced him wide. Ocon went the long way around and arrived at turn 2 with no place to go as Max assumed the presumptuous Ocon would not try to keep on keeping on. As @gufdamm stated: Max decided to win the corner and lose the race.

    1. Ocon wasn’t attempting to overtake Max…but to unlap himself. Sorry if the facts spoiled the on-track-battle-for-position narrative.

      1. @jimmi-cynic Surely to unlap yourself you have to overtake the leader, no?

        1. @asanator – yes, but there’s a small semantic difference in racing – an overtake results in a position gained, an unlap does not. That’s why @jimmi-cynic calls out that distinction.

          1. Yes, @asanator, technically that is correct. But as @phylyp states, there’s a subtle difference.

            In F1 an overtake is a heroic act worthy of fawning media praise, position and champagne – provided it was performed on merit not a DRS drive-by. The motorway pass still gets position, but fans are less bubbly about it.

            Unlapping, requires an overtake be performed, but it’s barely a net gain, because the original slow blue stain of shame for being lapped is not soon forgotten.

        2. Now that gave me a chuckle!

  6. NASCAR legend David Pearson passed away today at the age of 83. The Hall of Famer competed in 574 races and achieved a total of 105 wins and 113 poles. The 3x NASCAR champion also won the 1976 Daytona 500 along with multiple victories in the World 600 and Southern 500. May he rest in peace.

  7. I completely agree with the COTD, because Formula E in its current rate of progression has been offering marvelous technological leaps while being able to provide good racing. In the future, they should open up development of battery sizes and motors so that they can permeate down to actual road-usable technology. I also haven’t heard any developments on hydrogen racing, the last of which was a Le Mans car from Garage 56?

  8. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    13th November 2018, 7:13

    My issue with Formula E is that there are much more spectacular electric vehicles on the road. An off the shelf Rimac would set much faster laptimes. I feel electric power could be much better showcased.

    1. Don’t be so sure of that. The Rimac would get off the line a a little faster (2.5 seconds to 60 instead of about 3), but it wouldn’t be able to use its much higher top speed on an FE track and would almost certainly be slower through the corners.

      No road car can compete with a formula car – even the hypercars of the world are left behind by a pretty slow formula car. A Rimac is about as fast as a Radical SR8 LM around the Nurburgring, but the Radical is slower than a Formula 3 car around Spa (formula cars don’t race on the Nurburgring, of course). Road-going hypercars just don’t look quick once you pit them against single-seat racing machines.

  9. Sorry Keith, but the opinion articles regarding the big incident you reference to in this round-up are more balanced than your comment piece.

    1. You probably don’t come here for balanced analysis… Remember how Perez was a disgusting selfish brick* for starting the whole process against Force India, and how he would never be in Force India again and maybe no one else in F1 would take him because what he was doing? Would he share his 10M with the 400 unemployed workers? All that AFTER Perez explained why he was doing it? lol

      1. If I had to write a “comment” about his “comment article”, it would start like this:

        “Let’s have a round of applause for Keith”

        “Not, of course, for the completely unbalanced opinion he posted on his blog. He did go a little too low cherry-picking information about Jon and concluding pushing someone laughing at your face must be a reflection of bad parenting.”

        “What Keith deserves praise for is for how calm he was while people kept coming to the blog and looking at the ads, scrolling down to the comment section, pointing out several flaws on his article. Unfortunately, Keith is a victim of all visitors coming to the comment section and asking him questions. He did well not answering them, such calm and self control”.

        “Whoever disagreed with that ‘comment article’ and asked questions should be banned. There is a precedent for it, in other blog an user spammed the comment sections with racist comments and got banned, so anyone asking Keith questions about his article should be banned too. Racefans should give the Internet a lesson people should had learned at home.”

        (LOL)

  10. Indeed Alonso, indeed.
    – Yes, but the key difference with the other overtaking moves at T2 was that they were for a position.
    – Wrong, The Guardian. Max would’ve won the race had it not been for Ocon’s antics. Yes, Ocon had fresher tyres, but despite that, he still wouldn’t have been able to run away from Max had he gotten past due to the significant pace advantage the RBR-car has over the RPFI-car, which means, that he would’ve started to get blue flags again within a few corners anyway. At the very latest within the following two laps.

  11. Of course we don’t condone violence in any way

    Red Bull do not promote violence! Isn’t that absolutely great? I think I am going to become their fan and buy their umbrella.

    For sure, you do not win championships by being nice, F1 drivers are passionate people, emotions run wild, we do not want drivers to act like robots, pushing is not punching, etc. I do agree. At the same time, F1 should send a clear signal that it will not accept physical or verbal abuse of any kind. Given that the FIA threatened Vettel with the FIA International Tribunal after he had merely sworn at Whiting during a race, their response to this incident looks rather flaccid.

    1. If Max had done it to a FIA official, I’m sure he’d be having to (temporarily) hand back his licence. The FIA is always stricter in situations where its own staff (or volunteers labouring under their direction) are the targets of bad behaviour.

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