Was Fernando Alonso's Penalty Fair? | Jolyon Palmer’s F1 TV Analysis | Workday

On lap 57 of the 58-lap race, the battle for six reaches turn six and ends in tears for Alonzo and Russell. As we move forward, you can see Russell very, very close across the Apex. Too close he gets a load of dirty air from Alonso and ends up in the barriers now these cars are very sensitive to Eros, if you get so close behind a car in front you have to make adjustments and Russell was just going too fast because of the dirty air, no for the flow of clean air over his car that he expected and probably expected two questions, this is a complex topic, really, Alonzo was given a 20 second

penalty

, a drive-through equivalent, which is a severe

penalty

compared to the most of the things you see in incidents investigated by a A couple of things was this dangerous erratic driving and it was the cause of an incident for George Russell, so let's first cover whether it was erratic driving and we can join Fernando looking back at George Russell and you can hear that this was actually a bit erratic on Alonso's part as we were going up, he let off the accelerator, accelerated again and then went into the corner which is unusual and that meant Russell caught him at a much faster speed. faster than anyone would expect after another. car, this was certainly unusual.

Alonzo hadn't done that in the previous 56 La nor had anyone else, it's not something the driver behind would particularly expect. We can see from this data here, this is Fernando Alonso during the first half of the lap. We're looking at this turn as turn six and you can see the red line on lap 57. He's clearly running at a very different speed around this area than the blue line. Only if you release the accelerator can you see where the red line falls. down and the blue line continues at full speed as you normally would. Fernando releases the accelerator, actually pushes the brake very lightly and then lifts the accelerator, smoothly entering the corner again before braking and continuing the corner as usual, so there is an adjustment on Alonso's part, why does he do it? did he do well?

Because just after this is the biggest overtaking point on the circuit as DRS and a long run for turns nine and ten and where Russell has been close before and is trying to play. with Russell is trying to throw the Mercedes driver off balance and it actually backfired and the Mercedes driver crashed into the wall and, uh, there's certainly a case here for erratic driving, it looks like it's erratic driving. , I really don't know what. To be honest, I was half a second behind Fernando at the entrance to the corner and then suddenly, you know, before the Apex, I was right in his gearbox and I lost the car, he went off and, unfortunately, the wall was well beaten wall and then it was obviously dramatic a few seconds after the vtu throttle problems Slow down make your Delta positive I can't go full throttle very very stiff so Russell has reported that it's fine for them just the Next question is: Erratic driving has always been punished, the answer is no, because this is Fernando Alonzo, ahead of Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi, just three races before this, the final round of last year doing exactly the same thing.

Alonzo leaves the pits. Hamilton is on a fast lap. and Mercedes behind the ason Martín de Alonso and he retreats at this point well before the braking zone. You can see the 150 board above. The braking zone is about 70M for this corner so he backed off a lot early and Hamilton has had to back off, check only to fall behind Alonzo, they're actually playing DRS games here which is a bit of what Alonso was trying in Melbourne as well, so this is the data between Alonso and Alonso from Abu Dhabi and it is Something very very similar we are seeing this area in Abu Dhabi entering turn six and only once again he goes back on the lap in question, It goes slow, it has a little friction on the brake, it tickles.

He accelerates again, brushes on the brake again, wants Hamilton to really overtake him because they're playing DRS games and then finally enters the corner in a similar fashion once he realizes this is the time to go, but he's playing. Fundamentally, there was no penalty, there was no repercussion for this from Fernando Alonzo three races ago and in Melbourne he gave him a big penalty for a drive-thru that cost him 20 seconds of race time and that's more than we've ever seen before. penalty for There are many incidents recently with such erratic driving, yes on Alonso's part, but that is consistent with what happened before.

The answer is no in this case, so certainly the stewards, whether they like it or not, have observed the result of George Russell ending up in the barriers and in fact he ended up in the middle of the track, making the accident look like more dramatic than it was and I'm sure that's why Solono has been so thoroughly investigated and deemed punishable in this incident, but let's take a closer look at Russell. From the point of view then, we are coming into turn five, he has a decent gap to Alonso, ahead, the red light comes on at the rear, as mtin now just had some issues with ERS that he is struggling with with d, so you're actually harvesting.

Anyway, there was a lot of energy in the first part of the lap. Russell is also flipping the switch down here. You can see the board changing as it approaches turn six, but there's a decent amount of space between the two cars now, Alonzo. is driving erratically, yes confirmed, but is it dangerous because there is a big gap between Alonzo's car and Russell's car and this is not, I would say, a conventional brake test where the car behind has Have to hit the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front, in fact? We play this through the closest Russell gets to it only being so far back that you can practically fit another car between them, it's simply a case of he's got two clothes running at top speed and he's trapped some dirty air and that's what that moves.

George makes an oversteer which he corrects and ends up in the wall. It's a significant crash, it was obviously taken from the left side of the car, but it's a crash we've seen a few times before at this corner and it's also a tricky one. curve now, what did Russell do when he came to the curve? Let's take a look at his data and in fact if we look at turn six, the last thing he does before he hits the barrier, there you can see that he breaks a little bit earlier because he's catching Alonso, uh, he breaks 11M before for this corner and it's not enough, it still ends up in the dirty air and shoots towards the barrier, it actually drives, you see the Trace steering, it's a little more aggressive with the red steering.

On the crash lap he enters, he drives more aggressively, which destabilizes the car in the dirty air, but perhaps he is simply surprised at this point by how close he is to Fernando and makes a more instinctive steering turn. that would destabilize the car, but without a doubt. Having dirty air is the key problem for George Russell, but actually, if you look back at the first few corners of this lap, he's also breaking early in these corners and he's breaking seven meters early in turn one, he's breaking six meters. before in uh. In turn three, it's actually braking less hard, but if you look at the pause, it traces the bottom here, it's jumping 6M earlier there, so it hasn't changed much going into turn six for a car that has went very slowly coming into the corner effectively.

He stayed at full speed coming into the corner, then braked a little early, but not much difference compared to the first half of the lap, where Alonzo also had his erratic driving and then found himself too close to the Aon. Martin and towards the barriers and generally I can't help but feel watching it from Russell on board from his point of view here yes, Alonzo slows down, yes he is technically erratic and that gives the stars a reason to penalize him, it is inconsistent. penalty, but technically, according to this particular circumstance, it's hard for him to just discuss it, but looking from here there's enough space between the two cars and when he comes in, was there anything else that Russell could do instead of accelerating at full speed? ? a little early, but really similar to what he did earlier in the race and then ended up in the barriers, certainly George has to at least take some of the blame, if not all of it, it's a blurry picture, but you know that only he operates in these gray areas, he does it all the time, whether it was last year in Abu Dhabi, whether it was, I think, blatantly causing a yellow flag in qualifying in Baku a couple of years ago to uh to prevent the people get better there are countless times where Fernando Alonzo operates in these gray areas and I think Fernando knew that he had operated in this one as well because again, if we go back to his data here, you can see in the section after that it is SE Russell in on the barriers, it starts playing with the accelerator pedal here and it says there's something wrong with the accelerator, all these traces where the red starts to go down, you're stepping on the accelerator and it comes back on coincidentally that hadn't happened before, so I think he saw Russell in the mirrors go off and thought, oh, maybe that was a little too close, so he's trying to give himself a little excuse there or it turns out it's a legitimate problem with the accelerator at the moment when his rivals . ending up in the barriers seems unlikely to me, so I think Fernando knows that he is operating in the gray areas.

There is certainly an argument for penalizing it. In my opinion, maybe I'm a little harsh on Fernando. I don't think he's particularly dangerous. I thought there was enough space between the two cars for him to back up a little and the two cars never came close to touching? There was always a good amount of space. It is simply a dirty air problem of which we are opening a can of worms. With that, it will be a great topic of conversation, sure to continue for a couple of weeks and the drivers will make their thoughts known in Japan and at the drivers' meeting.