Alonso and his “friend” Ocon are no longer saved or the forms

Fernando Alonso has left many phrases throughout his career that are well remembered. From that “GP2 engine” as he described the McLaren Honda, going through one that, perhaps, he could have repeated in this short race in Brazil. While still at Ferrari, in 2012, he said a reality that not everyone complies with: “All the time you must leave space.” At that time he was fighting Lewis Hamilton and could be champion, but ten years later he would have been just as good at saying the same thing.

The nuance, and it is key, is that the one who threw him off the track at turn 4 of the first of the 24 laps of the sprint in Brazil was Esteban Ocon. His partner, at least until Abu Dhabi, continues to show race after race that he does not take prisoners when he has to defend a position or attack. This time he took the Chinese to Alonso, as it could have been to any other driver, with the key nuance that the Spaniard is the only driver that he should not defend so aggressively.

The problem wasn’t so much Ocon’s borderline defense, but what he did next. Alonso, with the front wing already damaged by that initial incident, tried to pass his teammate, but with a tiny but remarkable movement of the steering wheel he was prevented in the middle of the straight. A very dangerous action to which Alonso could not react, and which caused him to lose the wing completely. Result: the Asturian had to go into the pits to change the nose, and Ocon himself lost a key performance that in the end weighed down both of them. Alonso finished the race fifteenth, Ocon eighteenth and Alpine without points and with its two drivers forced to come back from far behind.

Who is guilty? Debatable, but there is a clear reality: if Ocon had not strangled Alonso (his own partner) until he got out, he would not have suffered a whiplash in his car with which he hit the side of the Frenchman’s car, whose consequences were not only seen in that poor performance in the following laps but when he reached the finish line he left on fire. Everything could have been avoided if Ocon knew how to behave with his teammates, a characteristic that has accompanied him since he started in Formula 1.

Alonso did not say that “all the time you must leave space”, but he did say a couple of radios that will resonate in Alpine for a few days. “I have lost the front wing thanks to our friend,” he said first, to later be more forceful in a message that was addressed to his still bosses, guilty of so many things this year that this incident will not even affect them. “He pushed me into turn 4. And then finally he pushed me down the straight as well. Well done! ”, ironized the Asturian. After the race, his anger was not minor, although he showed it smiling. «He makes me laugh, being fifteenth and eighteenth, it’s very funny. It is what usually happens whenever we go out together, last year I avoided it several times and this year it almost drove me against the wall in Jeddah and also in Hungary. Sooner or later these things happen, I can’t say anything,” recalled the Spaniard, who from fifteenth place will try to get “good points” for the team in his fight against McLaren.

Russell clinches a deserved win

The unexpected poleman Kevin Magnussen lasted just long, predictably, in front. As soon as Max Verstappen pulled the car, the Dane went back… but not for the Dutchman to win. The two-time champion finished off the podium (which is not such, since F1 insists on not considering the sprint race as a race, and that is why there is no ceremony with all its pomp and pageantry), behind a George Russell who won after an intense fight with him, showing that Mercedes’ first ‘black leg’ victory is much closer. After him ended a Carlos Sainz who continues to settle for the crumbs and who in his struggle to reach the top even touched Verstappen himself. Hamilton, third, already looks with gourmand eyes at the possibility that is offered to him for this Sunday.