‘No love lost between Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz after recent falling out’

Formula 1 pundit Peter Windsor has revealed that a recent falling out between Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz added an extra edge to their clash at the restart of last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

Faced with what was intended to be a two-lap sprint to the finish at Albert Park following a late red flag, Sainz and Alonso sensationally clashed at Turn 1 with the latter spun from third to the rear of the field.

With the race suspended again as chaos ensued, Alonso was reinstated to third place while Sainz received a five-second penalty for causing a collision.

Having ran fourth at the time of the restart, the fact that the race ended behind the Safety Car saw Sainz slide to last of the 12 finishers in Melbourne.

Sainz has idolised Alonso, the most successful Spanish driver in F1 history, since he was a youngster coming through the racing ranks – but Windsor has claimed the pair no longer see eye to eye.

And, speaking via his YouTube channel, the former Williams and Ferrari team manager has expressed his disgust with the handling of the collision, suggesting the stewards’ interpretation of on-track incidents has been skewed since Lewis Hamilton was penalised for spinning Alex Albon, then of Red Bull, at the 2020 Austrian GP.

He said: “Carlos goes into Turn 1 alongside Fernando Alonso, who’s ahead of him but not necessarily on the racing line [or] so far ahead that he can just use whatever bit of road he requires.

“He still needs Carlos Sainz to see him there and to back away and to give him the corner.

“My point has been, ever since the Alex Albon/Lewis Hamilton penalty in Austria, that this rule is insanely stupid.

“If you’re on the outside of any corner, you are tempting fate. You’re totally in the hands of the cars inside you and if they decide to use all the road, and you have to take avoiding action, you have to take avoiding action and run into the boonies.

“You can’t expect the driver on the inside of any corner to give way to you just because you’re ahead but you’re on the outside.

“The guy on the inside owns the corner. That is the absolute golden rule of motor racing.

“But they’ve come up with this sporting code where, now, if the car is ahead and he’s on the outside, you have to give way to him.

“I think that’s completely wrong and I’ve been saying that for five years.

“That’s why I say it was Charles Leclerc’s fault [on Lap 1], he shouldn’t have put the Ferrari in that place of danger.

“So there’s Carlos Sainz on the inside [and] Fernando Alonso is now effectively doing what Charles Leclerc was doing and, inevitably, Carlos runs into him.

“I’m not saying there’s anything malicious there at all but of course we have to add that, as I understand it, Carlos and Fernando have fallen out recently and there’s not a lot of love lost between them now – but that’s not relevant as I’m sure that wasn’t going through the minds of either of them. They were just focused on doing what they were doing.”

Having found Sainz culpable for the clash, Windsor feels the decision to drop him out of the points for an incident that had effectively been annulled compounded the stewards’ error.

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And he suggested the rush to make a decision before hearing Sainz’s side of the story stemmed from the confusion surrounding the podium positions at the recent Saudi Arabian GP, where Alonso was demoted from third before being reinstated three hours later.

“Whether or not you agree with that rule that if you’re on the outside but ahead you’re entitled to the corner and the guy on the inside should back away and give it to you – and I don’t – you would agree then that Carlos Sainz should have got some sort of penalty,” he said.

“This is where I think it went completely wrong in the Australian Grand Prix because, as we now know, that second restart was effectively annulled because the two Alpines ran into one another coming out of the corner.

“Had those two cars not been damaged they would have been allowed to restart as everybody else restarted, but because they were damaged and crashed they were out of it.

“But the main point about that restart was that the first sector hadn’t been reached and therefore that first corner didn’t really happen.

“It wasn’t part of the race and so therefore Fernando Alonso could come back and start in third place [after being] off in the boonies and Lance Stroll, who was also off in the boonies, could come back and start.

“But guess what?

“They penalised Carlos Sainz five seconds, so effectively they penalised him five seconds for an incident from part of the race that wasn’t even part of the race.

“That is completely wrong in my view.

“They rushed into it as well because there’s now an obsession, after what happened in Saudi Arabia, to get the penalty out and not discuss it after the race.

“And by giving him a five-second penalty in what was then going to be just one parade lap behind the Safety Car, they were effectively saying, ‘you’re last now, you’ve gone from fourth to last’ – which is absolutely ridiculous.

“Why didn’t they [give him a] two/three-place grid penalty at the next race? If they wanted to give him a penalty, why didn’t they do that?

“For something like that, when he’s on the inside anyway – yeah sure, Fernando’s in front of him, but he’s on the inside and he’s made a good start – why did they put him to the back of the field? That’s effectively what happened.

“I think that’s completely wrong. They need to look into this rule. This is absolutely insane.

“So Carlos Sainz effectively went from fourth to last for doing something that is a five-second penalty, which normally wouldn’t be affect his race that much, in an incident that wasn’t even part of the race because that was completely cancelled.

“None of that makes any sense to me and I’m quite upset about that.

“There’s no way in the world Carlos Sainz deserved to lose that fourth place or even a points finish. It’s just ridiculous.”

Windsor pointed to the three-place grid penalty Stroll served in Mexico last season, having collided with future team-mate Alonso at the previous race in Austin, as evidence of there being an alternative course of action for the stewards charged with determining Sainz’s punishment in Australia.

He said: “The precedent is there.

“For sure, when it comes actually to this business of hitting somebody or causing an avoidable accident, the protocol says it has to be a five-second penalty or 10-second penalty and they didn’t want to go beyond that, which to be is ludicrous because we were going beyond the norm in so many respects in this race.

“How often have we had a first corner shunt – or a first corner indeed – which has then been basically cancelled? It doesn’t happen very often in Formula 1. Once or twice – British Grand Prix, ’76.

“That’s something that I think needs to be looked at. I think it’s completely wrong that this penalty was handed out to Sainz and they were given no chance really to discuss it or even to say, ‘OK, mitigating circumstances because it’s effectively going to drop him to last place, give him a grid penalty at the next race, we’ll accept that’.

“That’s what they should have done and I think everybody would have agreed with that because he drove really well.

“He didn’t deserve to go to the back of the field for something like that, which was effectively a first-corner accident anyway.

“I know the stewards have gone out of their way to say it wasn’t really a first corner – but it was! It was a first corner.

“Everybody was on relatively cold tyres and everybody was going into the corner as late and as fast as they could, and they were racing.

“I don’t feel good about that.”