F1 | Alonso: "I was the only one making the corner" regarding track limits at the start of Austrian GP
Fernando Alonso talked about track limits at the start of the Austrian GP, saying he feels “a little bit stupid” for obeying them.
Fernando Alonso claimed he lost places because he obeyed track limits on turn one, according to Motorsport.com.
According to Alonso, he overtook Daniel Ricciardo and Carlos Sainz at the start of the Austrian GP, but they ran wide in turn one, overtaking him from outside the track and ending up in front of him.
“We raced two times here in two weekends and I was the only one overtaking cars at the start, braking very late for turn one on the inside.”
“I overtook Ricciardo and Leclerc this time and they went off-track the exit of one and they exit in front of me.”
“Even more than that, they take the run into the next car in front from the slipstream into turn three. So I don’t know, I felt that was very unfair today, again.”
“It was last weekend but today I was into turn one in front of Charles and Ricciardo and I exit turn one 50 metres behind Ricciardo. And I was the only one making the corner. So you feel a little bit stupid.”
Commonly there's more flexibility at the start of the race from the stewards regarding track limits but Alonso thinks the run off at turn one from Leclerc and Ricciardo was too much to be ignored.
“It’s written and it’s quite clear that on the first lap, they are a little bit more flexible on penalties and track limits because we are fighting. Sometimes you are forced to go outside the track because you are fighting and you are forced by another car and you take the run-off area.”
“But it was not the case. It was just a pure performance decision to go outside and to keep the throttle on. It was no one side-by-side. So I don’t think that is a grey area. It was quite clear.”
This year Austrian GP had some controversial decisions from the stewards, during the race they handed 10 penalties.
Michael Masi, Formula 1 race director, said:
“One of the things that we’ve said, and this came about since Paul Ricard in 2019, was that on the first lap and those first couple of corners, if it exists, that a car needs to be back behind the car it entered the corner behind.”
“We looked at the incident which Fernando was referring to and from the angles that we could see at the time, that was exactly what had occurred.”
