In the round-up: Former team mates Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon say there’s no hard feelings over their hard-fought scrap in the Spanish Grand Prix.
In brief
Ocon calls Alonso scrap “good racing”
Ocon defended his position firmly when Alonso took seventh place off him on lap 51. But while Ocon’s late move drew criticism from some commentators, Alonso said his former team mate raced him no harder than other drivers.
“If it was different on TV, I don’t know,” said Alonso in response to a question from RaceFans. “I overtook Zhou, Tsunoda and Esteban and for me they felt all the same.”
Ocon said he had “a good fight with Fernando,” in Spain. “I enjoyed racing with him. Once I saw he was on the right side, I backed off because I knew I couldn’t keep him behind. I managed for two laps but after I had to let him go.
“It’s been pretty normal, all good. There was no drama at all, it was good racing. I’ve enjoyed and I will enjoy many more battles with Fernando.”
Alfa Romeo discover Bottas had damage
Valtteri Bottas’ Spanish Grand Prix was compromised by damage he picked up on the first lap of the race, his Alfa Romeo team believe.
“Now we’ve got the car back we think we have seen there’s some damage on the floor and probably from lap one when he had some incident there in a fight during lap one,” the team’s head of track engineering Xevi Pujolar told media including RaceFans on Sunday. “So we were carrying all that damage and we had a bit of inconsistency which he was feeling.
“Initially we thought it was just the traffic because we can see in this car, especially when we are with the hard tyres, it can be a bit tricky when you hit traffic and then you may lose a bit of a temperature in the tyres and then is a bit difficult to recover the pace. But it was not only that, it was a bit more because even in free air he was struggling like this.”
Bottas started the race 16th and finished 19th with only Logan Sargeant’s Williams behind him. “Now we have seen that problem we need to investigate a bit more what could have caused that and then what it was in terms of pure performance,” said Pujolar. “So we’re looking into that and also for him to understand his feeling.”
Early lead means little in competitive field – Palou
IndyCar championship leader Alex Palou played down the significance of his 51-point lead with 10 races left in the season.
“There’s a lot of races to go,” said Palou, who has taken two wins, a fourth place and three pole positions in the last three rounds. “We got the lead two races ago, now suddenly we have this amazing lead.”
“On the same way that we go up, there’s somebody that can go up as well, and we can go down,” the 2021 champion continued. “That’s IndyCar. That’s the high competition that we have here.”
Asked who his main rival for the title is this year Palou said: “Dixon, Ericsson, Power, Newgarden, McLaughlin, Pato [O’Ward], I could keep going. I wish I could only name you one, but unfortunately or fortunately, I think that’s the cool thing about our series, there’s more than 10 drivers that I’m looking at.”
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
US SEC sues Binance, founder Zhao alleging securities law violations (Reuters)
‘The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance and its CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday for failing to restrict U.S. customers from its platform and misleading investors about its market surveillance controls, as well as for operating an unregistered securities exchange.’
Nelson Piquet has failed in his efforts to appeal a £816,000 ($R 5 million) fine for using a derogatory racist term to refer to Lewis Hamilton.
Leclerc: Qualifying ‘wakeup call’ needed to match DAMS’ race pace (Formula 2)
‘To be honest, I’m really not happy about what I’m doing in qualifying at the moment. Now I need to wake up a little bit because in quali, the gap was really, really close but there are small details that need to be adjusted. I didn’t take the maximum out of it, so it’s just on me, I need to wake up a little bit in these sessions.’
Discussions autour d’un retour d’un GP de France au calendrier (L’Equipe)
‘The return of the French Grand Prix has been rumoured as part of a rotation deal with other European countries potentially including Germany, Portugal and Turkey.’
How the FIA is helping to tackle plastic pollution from tyres through research and regulation (FIA)
‘Throughout their life cycle, tyres – a key element of mobility and motor sport – contribute to harmful pollution. However, in recent years, a number of measures have been developed to limit the negative effects of tyres – and through research, sustainability requirements and stricter controls, the FIA is playing its part in reducing the impact.’
Will Power says IndyCar field toughest in world: ‘F1’s a joke as far as competition’ (NBC)
”Formula One’s a joke as far as competition, but not as far as drivers. They have amazing drivers. And I feel sorry for them that they don’t get to experience the satisfaction we do with our racing because that is the top level of open-wheel motorsport.”
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Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Paradoxos, Jenny O’G and Saurabh!
On this day in motorsport
- 30 years ago today Nigel Mansell scored his second win in the CART IndyCar series, beating Raul Boesel by half a second on the Milwaukee oval
