Lance Stroll reckoned his contact with Fernando Alonso in F1 US GP looked more dramatic than it was but resulted in a penalty for him.
Post the first safety car period in F1 US GP, the re-start proved to be bad for Aston Martin’s Stroll and Alpine’s Alonso when the Spaniard tried a move on the Canadian at the back straight but ended up colliding going airbourne for a brief moment too.
Stroll moved to his left a bit at the same time when Alonso thought of taking the inside line going into the left-hander. The almost synchronised left moment resulted in a collision where they were far too close to each other, resulting in another safety car.
While Stroll retired immediately, Alonso pitted to end up dead last at that moment. Post-race, the Canadian stated that was trying to judge where he would go but the collision happened very quickly as they were too close to each other at that point.
“I looked at it,” said Stroll to TV media. “I mean, first of all, I think it’s a shame, we were having a good race. I definitely moved late but, I left him plenty of room on the left. It was a big difference in speed. I was kind of judging where he was behind me and I moved based on where I thought he was behind me.
“But he got really close to me and we just made contact, so it’s frustrating. He could have moved earlier and went more to the left. He didn’t have to get so close to me either. So, there’s a lot of different ways you could look at the incident. It was a shame. It was close wheel-to-wheel racing and unfortunately just made contact,” summed up Stroll.
The stewards disagreed with his stance as they handed him a 3-place grid drop for Mexico with two penalty points on his superlicense too. His future teammate Alonso was surprisingly fine with the collision too, giving the benefit of doubt to Stroll.
He conceded that the movement happened very quickly and that it was more of a racing incident. “It was scary in the car, because when you are up in the air, anything can happen,” said Alonso. “When I saw that I landed on the track, I said, ‘Okay, I will retire the car now and that’s it for today.’ But no, change tyres, front wing – go.
“When you see the thing on the TV, I think it’s a racing incident to be honest. We move basically at the same time to the left, and that was the trigger of everything. So I think it was a very unfortunate moment for everyone. When you are at 300 [km/h], those movements, you know, one-tenth of a second, you move 200 metres.
“If it’s in slow motion and you move it frame by frame, he will move a little bit later than me. If you go normal speed, you see both cars more or less at the same time. That’s why after looking on TV, I think there’s nothing you can do differently,” summed up Alonso, who eventually went on to finish seventh despite the bruises to his body and the car.
But to his unfortunate luck, the flapping mirror resulted in a post-race penalty which dropped him to 15th. A Haas protest into the matter for lack of black and orange flag caught the attention of the FIA stewards and they agreed to penalise him.
Alpine is to protest against the admissibility of the original protest as the onus is now the FIA. “The car is very strong again,” said Alonso before the penalty. “We have a very strong car and we changed tyres, the front wing, and kept going. It was amazing that the car managed to complete the 31 laps until the end and we still finished P7 after being P17, so it was a good race.”
Here’s the collision between Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2022-united-states-grand-prix-alonso-goes-airborne-in-huge-crash-with-stroll-at-cota.1747512107110186044.html
Here’s Alpine seeking to protest
Here’s all the details regarding the protest and penalty
Here’s how F1 US GP panned out
