Alonso – ‘Stewards weren’t watching’ Palmer incident

2017 Italian Grand Prix

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Fernando Alonso says that the stewards were ‘probably not looking at the television’ after his incident with Jolyon Palmer in the Italian Grand Prix.

Palmer passed Alonso on lap 13 after cutting to the inside of the Variante della Roggia, which incensed the McLaren driver. The stewards eventually awarded Palmer a five-second time penalty on lap 18, but Alonso was unhappy about how the incident was handled.

“I think it was again not up to F1 standards,” says Alonso.

“I think there’s no interpretation there possible when two cars go into the chicane and one misses the corner and the other one does the corner. It’s black and white. There’s no interpretations. Probably today they were not looking at the television, the guys in the FIA.”

It was another frustrating weekend for Alonso and McLaren, with both cars retiring after falling backwards through the field with relatively low straight line speed.

“Some of the stakeholders were here today,” Alonso explains. “Unfortunately, we could not deliver a good result – same for Eric [Boullier] Zac [Brown], so the whole team was here. Hopefully next time we can do better for them.”

Another fruitless race weekend will add further fuel to the speculation over the future of the McLaren-Honda partnership. Alonso says he expects the team to make choices over the team’s future before the next grand prix at Singapore.

“We’ll see. I think it’s an important week for McLaren to make some decisions,” Alonso says.

“So hopefully we’ll all know something before Singapore and we can comment on it there. I need to keep looking at what possibilities are for the future and make a decision hopefully in September.”

2017 Italian Grand Prix reaction

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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22 comments on “Alonso – ‘Stewards weren’t watching’ Palmer incident”

  1. Clearly driving for a British team has led Fernando to think that a ‘cheeky Nandos’ means being named Fernando and having banter all the time.

  2. “Unfortunately, we could not deliver a good result – same for Eric [Boullier] Zac [Brown], so the whole team was here. Hopefully next time we can do better for them.”

    I’m constantly in awe for the class Alonso displays in statements like these. A double world champion, who in a proper car was beating [The] Schumacher, driving around at the back of the field… Oh man.

    1. If only he was able to maintain that class driving around the back of the field, instead of shouting as his engineer the entire race.

      1. Easy for armchair racers like you and me to say. Would Hamilton or Vettel be able maintain class if they were going through what he has for the past 2 1/2 years? It proves he is not there for a paycheck but to win and McLaren know that.

        1. Marian Gri (@)
          3rd September 2017, 19:39

          They’ll be at least as loud as ALO, no doubt. 2016 Mexico and 2017 Baku showed VET cannot keep it together when nobody expects something wrong to happen, HAM has something to complain about every time his team mate performs better, every time the SC is deployed and he’s leading the race etc. So, yeah, there’s something to complain about even for the winner of a race or a champ, given ALO results since 2015… he’s totally excusable. Plus, there’s no other place to go to, all he can do is stay at McLaren and keep complaining. Vandorne is keeping it quiet cause he’s a rookie, but if things continue like this in 2018, he’s off at the end of the year.

      2. His results are fine. Drivers don’t get style points for being nice in radio

      3. Do u seriously watched f1??

        1. No, I post on F1fanatic because I only watch Curling.

          1. pure savage… haha

  3. He should have left a car’s width in the corner, instead of pushing him out (just as the other wonder boy did in Canada in turn 1).

  4. If Ron didn’t go for Honda but stayed with Mercedes i think he would won an title by now.

    1. @macleod It was Whithmarsh who came with that idea and look where the team is now.

  5. I was so surprised to see them progress through the field. Vandoorne had a chance at the points.

    But man… these Honda engines keep throwing surprises. McLaren are in a tricky situation, thinking about turning itself into a 3rd class Renault engine user. But to be honest, they need that to get away from First Class Honda.

  6. Stewards weren’t watching the race

  7. I remember a few years ago there was a bit of a debate about the standard penalty for this sort of thing (five second time penalty)… whether it was better for the offending driver to just drive off, and hope they pull out a five second gap to the guy they just went off the track to overtake, instead of give the position back straight away. In this case, obviously it was better…

    1. Indeed. I think it probably ought to be a tougher penalty to prevent this. It really should be more beneficial to give the place back than to take the penalty.

  8. Alonso called Palmer’s retirement karma, Alonso’s entire career after 2007 has been karma.

      1. Dino (@dinodoubledown)
        4th September 2017, 19:35

        The thing about Alonso is WHY do Mercedes, Ferrari and RedBull NOT want him?………

        1. @dinodoubledown: bottas, hamilton, vettel, verstappen and ricciardo, albeit alonso might be slightly better, are all doing a very good job, raikkonen is certainly far worse than alonso atm but they want stability at ferrari, they don’t want 2 top drivers at once cause they’d cause mayhem; some people say bottas hasn’t been as good this year, but even then, same situation applies at mercedes, they don’t take alonso cause they don’t want 2 top drivers mainly, not certainly for his ability.

          1. Dino (@dinodoubledown)
            6th September 2017, 16:09

            Esploratore is that what really you think? Or is that what you want others to believe?

        2. @dinodoubledown
          He still has the knife he used back in 2007, and his bestmate showed in 2008 the pair of them are willing to do anything to get ahead, regardless of what the world thinks if their tactics.

          Ron did the absolute right thing in getting Alonso back and making him stay as they’d look even worse now (if it’s possible) without him, but he’s definitely soiled goods you’d not touch with a barge pole. The atmosphere at Ferrari was worse with him, and immediately turned for the better once he left.

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