F1 | Austrian GP | Fernando Alonso’s take on this season’s championship fight and off-track overtaking
The two times world champion talks about Verstappen outshining Hamilton’s performance in this year’s title fight and how the FIA should pay more attention to drivers off-track actions than celebrations post-race.
After last weekend’s race at the Red Bull Ring, according to Racefans.net, Fernando Alonso claimed Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc went off at the first corner and rejoined ahead of him, but later made contact and fell behind Alonso. He pointed out that the FIA did warn race winner Max Verstappen over his post-race burn-out but remained silent about the off-track overtaking.
“I think the FIA should police more the track limits. In turn one I was the only one making a move into turn one at the start and the two cars that I overtook they missed turn one and the exit in front of me,” said the Alpine driver.
“This burnout, I think it was nice to watch. Even the doughnuts sometimes in Abu Dhabi, I think the fans, they like that, and you see a lot of videos from those moments on social media.
“And for example, there is no warnings on that and there is on the burn-out. So there are things that for sure we can improve for the fans’ point of view.”
He went on to declare that he is pleased that reigning champion Lewis Hamilton is up against some serious competition against the Red Bull driver, saying that the competition is interesting to follow and watch from outside.
“At least we don’t have like previous years that it was Lewis against Lewis and sometimes Valtteri [Bottas], but not often,” he said.
“So at the moment we have a more interesting championship so we can follow with a little bit more adrenaline until Abu Dhabi. I think that’s a good thing.
“[My] favourite at the moment probably is Max, because he’s performing better. But things can change quickly depending on the performance of all the teams and the updates to the car, et cetera. So we will follow from a distance.”
The Spaniard, who has already drivern alongside Hamilton at McLaren in 2007, said that he would like the opportunity to be Verstappen’s teammate one day as well.
“Probably we still have an opportunity in the future. Maybe not in Formula 1, honestly, because I don’t think that’s a possibility.
“But in the future, who knows? I think both of us love racing and endurance racing and Le Mans and many things so it will be nice one day to share a team.”
