Fernando Alonso has revealed that the stewards failed to do any diligence before giving him a five-second penalty for cutting a chicane at the Miami Grand Prix.
Alonso has already been given a five-second penalty for his collision with Pierre Gasly when he dived to the inside and hit the Frenchman, ultimately spelling an end to his race.
While Gasly was trying to get his AlphaTauri back to the pits, he whacked Lando Norris and brought out the Safety Car, after which the Spaniard was chasing down Valtteri Bottas for seventh, and he took a strip across the chicane at Turns 14 and 15 after making a mistake.
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The 40-year-old claims he lifted off and gave back all of the time that he had gained, but the stewards did not even stick around to review Alpine’s evidence.
“It was unfair. It was just incompetence from the stewards, they were not very professional I think in Miami. I missed one corner, then I gave back the time on the lap,” he explained.
“They took the decision without asking [for] any proof.”
The Spaniard elaborated that, by the time he and his team had reached the stewards’ office to submit their footage, they had all but left the circuit.
“We arrived after the race with all the proof and the time back that we gave, and they were just packing up. They were not even in the room,” added an irritated double world champion.
“We came there, we showed them all the data, they said give us five minutes and then they found themselves with the hands tied probably because they issued already the penalty and they didn’t know how to get back from that document.”
Alonso’s relationship with the stewards has always been a Ying and Yang-type contrast, and he was left exasperated by their actions in Florida.
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“It was very bad, and honestly, I mean… yeah, it’s already the past but it is something that should not happen in Formula 1, with professionalism and standards Formula 1 has right now,” he said.
The 10 seconds of penalties in Miami meant that the 40-year-old finished outside the points, and has not scored wince the first round of the season in Bahrain.