Fernando Alonso has called the Hamilton-Verstappen crash at the Italian GP a racing incident.
Title rivals Hamilton and Verstappen collided on Lap 26. The resulting crash saw both drivers being taken out of the race by each other. As a result, there has been intense discussion and debate among F1 fans as to who was at fault. The drivers’ respective teams also gave their opinions, and of course backed their drivers.
Alonso has spoken on the incident, and called the Hamilton-Verstappen crash at the Italian GP a racing incident.
“They are two champions who always fight on the limit,” Alonso told the Spanish edition of Motorsport.com.
“So I don’t think it was a big deal today. In Silverstone it probably was, but this was just a racing incident.
“I’ve just seen the incident, and it seems that their position in relation to the kerb was unfortunate. The speed is low, about thirty or forty kilometres per hour, there is no danger, there is nothing.
“I think Lewis tried to go wide in the first corner to force Max to cut the corner. Max didn’t cut the corner, he stayed on the outside, but then couldn’t do the second corner on the inside.
“They both did what they had to do, they were both racing and it wasn’t much different to the five or six incidents we saw at the start,” the two-time world champion concluded his analysis.
Controversy
Alonso’s analysis was the consensus among the F1 community of fans. However, the stewards’ opinion differed from his. They stated that Verstappen was predominantly to blame because he had no reason to enter the corner with Hamilton ahead of him.
The stewards asserted that Verstappen had the option to back off or go wide, but he chose to stick in the narrow space he already squeezed into.
As a result, Verstappen will take a penalty for the next race, and it will be a three-place grid penalty. This will be the talking point until the next race at least, and we haven’t seen the end of it.
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