The United States Grand Prix did not smile on the Spanish drivers. The first injured in the Circuit of the Americas was Carlos Sainz. The Ferrari driver had achieved pole position and dreamed of winning the second race of his life. A touch in the first corner, however, knocked him out and he had to retire.
Much better seemed to go to Fernando Alonso. The Alpine driver suffered a spectacular accident when he collided with the Canadian Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), but he had managed to come back to climb to seventh position. Hours later, the Spaniard would know a sanction from the FIA with which he did not count.
Alonso was penalized 30 seconds for running without a mirror in the final laps. The decision angered his team, which protested "the admissibility" of the complaint filed by the Haas team. With the penalty, Alonso fell from the points that he achieved with enormous effort, after starting fourteenth and crashing during the grand prix.
Alonso had taken Stroll's aspiration and, when it happened to him, the one who will be his teammate next year made a late move that led the Asturian's car to do a wheelie that, miraculously, ended in a scare and that did not prevent him from complete the race.
The FIA estimated that Alonso returned to the track "in unsafe conditions after the accident", for which it agreed to a sanction that lowers him from seventh to fifteenth place. For the Alpine team "this post-race time penalty is disappointing", which "unfortunately means that Fernando stays out of the positions that give the right to points".
"The team acted fairly and felt that the car was still structurally sound as a result of Fernando's incident with Lance Stroll on lap 22 of the race, with the right side rear view mirror detached from the frame as a result of damage caused by the accident," the team added in a statement.
Alpine recalls that the FIA "has the right to put a black and orange flag on a car during the race if it considers it unsafe" but that on this occasion "it evaluated the car and decided not to act". "Furthermore, after the race, the FIA technical delegate considered the car to be legal," Alpine stressed.
"The team also believes that, because the protest was filed 24 minutes after the deadline, it should not have been accepted and therefore the sanction should be considered invalid. As a result of this point, the team has protested the admissibility of the original Haas F1 Team protest," the team said.
