During the United States GP last Sunday, a collision occurred between Fernando Alonso of Alpine and Lance Stroll of Aston Martin. The accident knocked out the Spaniard’s future team-mate, while the two-time world champion finished in 15th place due to a 30-second penalty for a dangerous pit exit. After the race, Alonso stressed that he feared an Indycar-style impact.

The Spaniard, who will move to Aston Martin next year, collided with future team-mate Stroll on lap 22. On this occasion, the Canadian moved late to the left in an attempt to defend his position, and Alonso failed to react in time. , slamming into the back of Lance’s AMR22. So Fernando took off quickly from the track and hit the barriers, but managed to return to the pits and recover, staying in the race. At the end of the GP at the Circuit of the Americas, the double champion finished seventh, but after a penalty which was not confirmed until later, the 30 seconds dropped him to fifteenth position.

In an interview before the punishment, Alonso said he feared an Indycar-style impact after being thrown into the barriers. “It wasn’t cool, because when you’re in the air, you don’t know where you are on the track.

“I thought it was a lot more to the left and obviously if you go towards the side fence – the metal one – you turn 360° in the air. You see a lot of these type of crashes in Indycar and they are quite dangerous.

“When the car landed on the track, I felt good, everything was safe. I thought the car would definitely break down.

“I drove slowly to the pits, thinking we were going to abandon the car. I was surprised when they changed the tires and the front wing and sent me on the track.

“I said, ‘Okay, it’s just a test, but they’ll call me on the next lap’, but no, the car was apparently fine when they visually checked it. It wasn’t wrong. So we continued.”

One of the accidents Alonso referred to happened with Robert Wickens in 2018, in Pocono. At this time, the driver was thrown against the fence after contact with another car. The Canadian driver suffered spinal fractures and other serious injuries, and is now a paraplegic. However, he returned to racing, but not in single-seaters.

The Spaniard reported that the car “looked very good in the left-hand corners and very bad in the right-hand corners”, but improved over the course of the race. Stroll was found guilty of the incident and received a three-place grid penalty for the Mexican GP. Still, Alonso said they both thought it was just a racing incident.

“Honestly, when you see it on TV, it’s a racing incident.

“We basically moved left at the same time – and that was the trigger for everything. It was a very unhappy time for everyone.

“We were in the steward’s room, I think it was more between our sports directors than between us.

“I think we saw the incident the same way with the same eyes and our sporting directors saw it with completely different eyes.”