Fernando Alonso, Valtteri Bottas, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal, 2022

Wrong to penalise Alonso for “good racing” with Bottas – Grosjean

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso should not have been penalised for weaving in front of Valtteri Bottas on the last lap of the Canadian Grand Prix, says former Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean.

In brief

“Let them race” says Grosjean over Alonso penalty

Alonso was given a five-second time penalty for making multiple changes of direction in front of Bottas on the final lap of Sunday’s race. The penalty dropped him from seventh to ninth, and left Grosjean unimpressed.

“I really disagree with Fernando Alonso’s penalty,” said Grosjean. “He didn’t deserve one for moving twice on the straight. The back straight is not even straight so how can yo go straight?

“Bloody let them race. It’s good to see wheel-to-wheel action, obviously it has to be under certain limits, but I didn’t feel like that was anything bad. I thought it was good racing and it was exciting to see it.”

Grosjean also criticised the race director’s decision to show the black-and-orange flag to Kevin Magnussen due to his damaged front wing. “Yes, the front wing is going a little bit in pieces but it’s a small piece and if you really want to avoid anything [hitting] the drivers, put an Aeroscreen just like IndyCar, and then the part can fly and won’t hit the driver’s helmet.”

Piastri to make F1 practice debut soon

Could Piastri make his FP1 debut in Austria?
Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says test and reserve driver Oscar Piastri will get an opportunity to run a car during a grand prix weekend soon.

“He will be in an FP1,” Szafnauer said after the Canadian Grand Prix. “We can tell you it won’t be Silverstone, but it’s not far off.”

After the British Grand Prix F1 will head to the Red Bull Ring. Piastri tested a 2021-specification Alpine at the Austrian track earlier this year.

Latifi’s grandad in the grandstands last weekend

Nicholas Latifi’s grandfather was among his family members who came to watch his belated first appearance as a Formula 1 driver at home. Latifi’s rookie season coincided with the Covid-19 outbreak which kept the Canadian Grand Prix off the calendar for the last two years.

While Latifi comes from Toronto, much of the rest of his family is from the Montreal area. “I had my grandfather, all my immediate family [here],” he said after the race. “Everyone else besides my immediate family still lives here in Montreal.”

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Comment of the day

Are Ferrari likely to hold the upper hand over Red Bull through the coming races?

The difference in set up choices were no longer relevant after Baku where Ferrari have introduced a new low-downforce package. Ferrari didn’t update the F1-75 in the first seven races and were more than a match to Red Bull who were developing the RB18 at a faster rate. Barcelona is normally the benchmark track to measure the aerodynamic balance of an F1 car and Ferrari were mighty quick there so it’s normal to expect them to be quick in high downforce tracks.

Ferrari only lagged compared to Red Bull on the straights and in the tyre management department. That is no longer the case after the upgrades introduced in both Barcelona and Baku. Ferrari was quicker than Red Bull in both qualifying and race in Bahrein, Australia, Barcelona and Monaco.

Red Bull was quicker than Ferrari in both qualifying and race only in Imola. In Miami Red Bull have had the advantage during the race due its superior tyre management. Despite the fact that Saudi Arabia, Baku and Canada were tracks suited better to the RB18, Ferrari was in contention for the win in all those tracks. If you look at the remaining races, the only track where Red Bull might be untouchable is Monza while there will be lots of tracks where Ferrari will be flying.
@Tifoso1989

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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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16 comments on “Wrong to penalise Alonso for “good racing” with Bottas – Grosjean”

  1. Obviously Vettel’s “tar sands protest” had an much stronger impact than if Greenpeace had invaded the track. The latter would have quickly been forgotten as “their typical shtick”, whereas the “hypocritical” protest by Vettel is still being written about a week later.

    1. And it’s rather smart protest by Vettel. He raises the awareness about oilsands (which I had to look up) and he indirectly the same about his sponsor (which would be a bit difficult to do directly).

  2. What Fernando did was not racing.

    Sharing opinions on what constitutes good racing should probably not be in the domain of Mr-once-in-a-generation-race-ban-for-terrible-and-dangerous-racing Grosjean.

    1. Given the evidence he worked hard on himself to be better I don’t think your comment needed that last sentence @proesterchen, but I do agree with the first part, and that Grosjean defends his former teammate, well logical. Still, to me this says that in future his opinion on incidents in F1 can be seen as an outsider who feels hie has a say, rather than as someone who has a solid take and should be listened to.

      1. Didn’t Grosjean pretty much get slated by his rivals in Indycar for his driving standards being dangerous? I wouldn’t put much weight on his opinion of what is fair driving personally.

      2. I do. His driving standards in Indycar are no less erratic than they were in F1.

    2. I re-watched the race and the episode. I am baffled by the stewards’ decision to penalise Alonso. There was nothing wrong.

  3. There’s this thing called the rulebook and there’s this other thing called a rule that making 2 or more moves is a penalty. Grosjean can never return to F1. In Indycar they just ram into other cars and nothing is against the rules.

  4. Why a gossip column from The Express included in a round-up here? Are we going to read personal massage from every other drivers too?

    1. @ruliemaulana in fairness they absolutely would if they could but the phone hacking scandal put paid to that one for the newspapers! Hopefully most people will just ignore it for what it is, a fun comment with no context.

    2. I lol’ed hard at the headline though. “SECRET MESSAGE”

      No, private message, not secret lmao.

  5. @keithcollantine the doohan article links to a forum thread

    re:cotd, time will tell, but Ferrari have missed a lot of chances so far this year that have been completely unrelated to having the faster package or not. They need some bad luck to befall Red Bull, but also to stop making unenforced errors. What package they have is the secondary consideration at this point.

  6. Thanks for the COTD !

    1. Well done :)

  7. We should be talking about that insane black and orange for Magnussen instead. Ocon even admitted he wasn’t worried and only complained over the radio hoping to get past him. Magnussen also rightly pointed out that in Jeddah Hamilton kept going with half his wing off and said Hamilton should have been allowed to do that too.

    F1 is becoming such a sissy sport due to the zero risk tolerance of the race directors. Do they even have actual former racers making the calls?

  8. Unsurprising from someone who once got a race ban for dangerous driving.

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