Alonso showing his lack of class - yet again

Alonso was cleared by the FIA stewards and by RD because he was found to have followed correctly his engineer's directive, who is the one that officially counts the time and decides when the car leaves the pit and not the lollipop man as everybody assumed. It was a strategy error and RD now places the blame on Hamilton for not having followed the planned car sequence of refueling.

 

Alonso NOT cleared, dropped 5 places for delaying LH.

 

Alonso demoted to sixth in Hungary

By Biranit Goren Saturday, August 4th 2007, 21:49 GMT

World Champion Fernando Alonso has lost his pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix and will start tomorrow's race in sixth place.

The race stewards at the Hungaroring have decided to demote the McLaren driver after reviewing evidence from today's qualifying session, where the Spaniard held up teammate Lewis Hamilton in the pits, causing the Briton to miss out on a final flying lap and possible pole.

Alonso was adamant that he remained stationary for ten seconds because his engineers had told him to, while team boss Ron Dennis told reporters after the session that the incident was a result of Hamilton himself ignoring team orders earlier on in the session, therefore leaving the two drivers out of sequence.

The stewards talked to representatives of the team and reviewed recordings of the car radio transmissions before making their decision, over eight hours after qualifying ended.

 

grandprix.com reporting the 5 place penalty:

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19506.html

 

Justice that no amount of "Ronspeak" can fix!

Dan, many apreciate your even-handedness on this, but they found the guy guilty

<very big grin>

 

Source

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19506.html

 

Yep - It's true:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/61370

Now, I had him on pole, with LH 2nd (and KR 3rd FWIW) in the fantasy league - I wonder what counts - Quali or the grid?.....

Cheers,
Ian

 

I'm gonna wait until they've finished the warm up lap before finally deciding who's got pole. F1 stewards have sod all consistancy.

 

Wishful thinking by those sites, perhaps.

This was pretty cut-and-dry, imo, and I don't think Mephistophiles Dennis did himself any favors by throwing Hamilton in front of the bus. Maybe he saved Alonshole from going to the back of the grid, but I imagine Hamilton's loyalty is on much softer ground than before.

World Champion Fernando Alonso has lost his pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix and will start tomorrow's race in sixth place.

The race stewards at the Hungaroring have decided to demote the McLaren driver after reviewing evidence from today's qualifying session, where the Spaniard held up teammate Lewis Hamilton in the pits, causing the Briton to miss out on a final flying lap and possible pole.

Alonso was adamant that he remained stationary for ten seconds because his engineers had told him to, while team boss Ron Dennis told reporters after the session that the incident was a result of Hamilton himself ignoring team orders earlier on in the session, therefore leaving the two drivers out of sequence.

The stewards talked to representatives of the team and reviewed recordings of the car radio transmissions before making their decision, over eight hours after qualifying ended.

Autosport.com will publish the full steward decisions as soon as it becomes available


Go to earlier story Go to the News Index

 

bbc, planetf1, formula1.com etc etc arent showing anything about a demotion

 

Maybe you should let 'em know then....... [I included the autosport.com link above btw]

Cheers,
Ian

 

yeah formula1.com doesn't have alonso's demotion published. Assuming it's true i'm happy he's being penalized. 5 spots is a real arbitrary position though I'd rather have them take away his fastest lap and demote him to 8th on the grid.

 

i just heard something else that now mclaren can't scrore any points this weekend!?!? has anyone else heard or read this?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/6929333.stm

 

+1

I assume you know his 2nd best lap would have put him 8th, correct? - Nice idea - I bet the stewards wish they'd thought of that!....

Cheers,
Ian

 

thank you =)

So mclaren can't score any constructors points this is huge!

 

Yep and this will only fuel the British press for tomorrows papers.. most want Alonso banned.

Poor Ron just what he didnt' want this weekend.

Gonna be an ugly day for F1 tomorrow me thinks....

 

The FIA also decided that McLaren Mercedes will not earn any points from the race for the constructors world championship.

 

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys. Wonder what evidence they had on the radio.
How do they justify no WCC points? It only affected their own team. Are they just trying to even up the point standings a bit?

Mr. Integrity (RD) throws his rookie driver who is the current points leader under the bus. RD would sell his own mother to win a title IMVHO.

Putting FA back 5 places will make it almost impossible for Lewis to force his teammate off the road in T1. Kimi in P3 has a shot at it though, not that he would do such a thing...

Going to be an interesting race to watch. The McCheater Team better not make a mistake in the pits Sunday effecting either driver.

Pray for rain.

 

Mr. Integrity cost his team points by trying to lump it on Hamilton. What Alonso did was block Hamilton's lap, clearly a rules violation that would have DQ'd all of Alonso's lap times. By dragging Hamilton in, it showed they were trying to engineer who goes on pole position (and who would win!), and as a result of that questionable strategy, it caused Alonshole to pull his stupid cr@p. It's all an embarassment to F1 competition and the reason they're being slapped so heavily as a team. (FTR, I agree with LH "don't pull that (cr@p) on me again"...he should never have to concede pole, especially when he was clearly the fastest man on the track.)

Second time this week RD allowed himself to speak from his rear-end to his team's detriment.

Next time, let Alonshole go down on his own...

 

So what if the FIA found him guilty. Does what they decide actually have any meaning anymore? This was an intra-team issue.

It was said that Alonso's race engineer held him back. Do you think any driver on the grid would ignore orders from his race engineer? Oh, wait a second. Lewis ignored orders from his team. Not once, but a few times. Alonso followed orders from his team. Ron Dennis cleared Alonso. Case closed. Nothing further needs to be said. What the FIA decides is irelevant.

 

You're forgetting the FIA regulations against team orders which affect the outcome of an event.

And that malarky about Hamilton not letting Alonso by is nonsense. Remember the start of Q3? Hamilton disappeared up the road while Alonso held up Kimi until the Kimster got around the Wonder Snail. I don't know if there was something wrong with that set of throw-away tires Alonso started Q3 on, but Hamilton would have had to back up (and lose position to Kimi) to get behind Alonso.

Apparently the track stewards didn't buy that one, either.

It's still interesting that formula1.com hasn't confirmed the penalties yet. So it's just the local track officials at the moment. FIA might override this yet.

 

i think weve already covered this in the many many threads about it.
bottom line if they had penalised mclaren for their employees actions then by the fia rules then they would have had to penalise ferrari for their mans actions too - yes thats a ridiculous situation, but then thats what happens when you try and make an employer responsible for a member of staffs actions outside of the office.
this isnt the time or place to discuss THAT issue further

 

I think team orders refer to manipulating the outcome of a race - not making decisions in the pit lane during quali that the masses dont like.

I think the team should be free to run qualifying however they like, so long as they do not intentionally impede another teams qualifying. We've seen plenty of weird decisions in quali over the years. I think the team should be in charge. If there is rain coming and they send one guy out on intermediates early in the session and another guy out on slicks, KNOWING they are screwing one guy but knowing at least one of them will get it right, I think thats well within their power and is reasonable. If one driver ignores an order and the other driver sticks to his plan, which ends up screwing the first driver, I would lay blame at the feet of the first guy. I think thats what happened here and I think its outrageous that the stewards are penalizing the team for this.

 

good to hear the fia arent totally useless then

bit odd about no constructors points tho
surely if they wanted to implement something along those lines then not allowing Alonshole not to score for constructor would have been enough but its their call.