Fernando Alonso lowered his rhetoric towards Lewis Hamilton as he reflected on their Lap 1 collision at the Belgian Grand Prix.
The former McLaren teammates went wheel-to-wheel into Les Combes on the opening lap at Spa Francorchamps, but Hamilton on the outside would turn into the Alpine leading to contact that pitched his Mercedes into the air.
When world champions collide ?#BelgianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/x0SL4PPG20
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 28, 2022
In the heat of the moment, Alonso blasted the seven-time world champion as an “idiot” who “only knows how to drive and start in first”, leading to an interesting response from Lewis.
And afterwards, the Spaniard compared the incident to another infamous clash Hamilton had at the same corner in 2014.
“I think for me it was a little bit of a mistake from his side to close the door like this in turn five,” said Alonso. “We have seen many, many times that it goes parallel there.
“It happened the same between him and [Nico] Rosberg a couple of years ago so this time it was the same thing.”
#DanielRicciardo capitalised on the first moment of tension between #LewisHamilton and #NicoRosberg at Mercedes #onthisday eight years ago! #F1 #Formula1 #BelgianGP pic.twitter.com/1Nrs5Gvhoq
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But after his initial fire, Fernando was much calmer as he accepted the stewards’ decision to call it a racing incident.
“Yeah, these things happen,” he added.
“At that corner especially, there are a lot of things that are going on and people normally cut the corner at six and rejoin the track at seven, so it is a tricky part of the circuit for sure.
“And it was a racing incident, nothing to say, but I’m just sad because these things happen always when I start P2 or P3, when I’m 12th or 13th, I have a clean race.
“I wanted to have a clean race and unfortunately we started already with this incident and then we had a very aggressive strategy of stopping very early every time.
“I don’t think it was the smartest one but in the end, top five, it makes a good weekend for us.”
As Alonso noted, he would continue on and eventually finish fifth thanks to a late blunder by Charles Leclerc and Ferrari.
The Monegasque made a late change to soft tyre to attempt the fastest lap, only to be overtaken by Fernando on the Kemmel Straight.
Though Leclerc would get back ahead on the final lap, not only did he not beat Max Verstappen’s fastest time, he also picked up a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. dropping him to sixth.
“Yeah, I was surprised,” Alonso said of seeing Charles emerge from the pits. “[But] Ferrari always do some strange strategies. So that was one of those.”