Alonso escapes opening lap chicanery

Sunday 28th September 2008

In the wake of Fernando Alonso's unexpected victory at the Singapore GP, attention has turned to his opening lap overtaking moves.

Just as Lewis Hamilton was penalised for gaining an advantage for cutting a chicane at Spa, replays of the first corner incident have shown that Alonso's first corner momentum was aided greatly by his failure to use the circuit.

Starting from 15th on the grid, Alonso was on a low-fuel, soft tyre strategy in a bid to make up places as quickly as possible on the opening lap. He placed his Renault tight into the inside of the track at Turn 1 with almost no room to make the turn and simply cut the chicane to avoid getting stuck in the traffic jam of other cars.

His failure to take the racing line into the corner alongside Jenson Button's Honda allowed him to overtake the Brit and claim 12th place on the opening lap, while Button slipped down to 14th place.

Stewards decided not to investigate this or the moves of Nelson Piquet and Nick Heidfeld who also benefitted from not using the tarmac.

Alonso and Heidfeld were both critical of Hamilton's move at Spa with Alonso pointing out that even though Hamilton did not gain a place on Kimi Raikkonen he would not have had the same momentum if he had been forced to take the chicane "that is what they are there for" said the Spaniard.

Your Comments

nuno

"for some people to understand that alonso DID LET EVERYBODY pass in the turns 2 and 3 is mission impossible? heidfeld did the same. cry about your lewis instead.

owainluvsf1> first corner won race for alonso :DDD made my day! "

finolait

"I think everybody is forgeting that Hamilton didn't win at Spa because he cut the chicane. It was because he kept his car on the the track to the end. Something Kimi did not do and crashed out. FIA punished Hamilton all the same because of a rule intepretation. So if that is so, then all chicane cutting must be punished, even if it is at the start of a race. Rules are rules, aren't there?"

F1_FREAK_666

"Planet-LH gets lamer by the day. I imagine them scouring the race footage for any story they can spin to make it sound like poor poor Lewy has the whole sport against him. The only thing lamer than the ITV-esque LH bias of the reports here is the claims by the McLaren nursery school pupils that Massa's penalty doesn't really count as a penalty because he was toward the back of the field and that's the only reason the FIA gave it. Honestly, you people need to get out more and stop watching X-files videos, it's messing up your brains."

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