Fernando Alonso Ally Exposes FIA’s Double Standards to Legitimize Anti-Spanish Bias Allegation

There has been a lot of chatter amongst the drivers lately concerning how the FIA is inconsistent in judging incidents and handing out penalties. One driver who has been fairly vocal in this regard is Fernando Alonso. And after the stewards decided to let go of the Lewis Hamilton-Max Verstappen collision in Hungary, one of Alonso’s engineers took it to social media to expose FIA’s double standards when it comes to giving penalties.

As per a recent thread on the Formula 1 subreddit, Mikey Brown took to his Instagram story to share a photo to show the contrast between Alonso’s collision with Zhou Guanyu in Austria and the Hamilton-Verstapen collision in Hungary and how the latter looked much more dramatic.

“10-second penalty for Alonso and a risk of a race ban,” Brown captioned under Alonso’s incident. To show the contrast in the judgment, he mocked the FIA by adding, “FIA Stewards: The driver of car 44 could have done more to avoid the collision.”

While it can’t be proved that the FIA is biased when giving out verdicts, this does give a little bit of weight to Alonso’s argument that they are especially biased against him because he is Spanish. Alonso even openly said that the FIA is anti-Spanish during the 2024 Miami GP Sprint Race when he thought Hamilton should have gotten penalized for his move that played a part in ending the 19-lap race for Lando Norris and his teammate Lance Stroll.

The FIA has been very strict against Alonso in 2024

Alonso’s criticism of the FIA started when they gave him a drive-through penalty that got turned into a 20-second penalty post-race for an incident on the last lap of the Australian GP that saw George Russell’s car turned halfway around on the middle of the track.

The FIA noted that Alonso had braked suddenly on a fast section of the track, causing Russell’s crash. Alonso, on the other hand, defended himself by saying that such a verdict suggests that drivers are not allowed to defend anymore.

Something similar happened in the Chinese GP Sprint Race when Alonso was defending against fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz, who ended up going off track. This resulted in a 10-second post-race penalty for Alonso.

And that’s not it, as Alonso passed a very interesting bit of comment on his team radio during the Miami GP Sprint Race when he told his team that Hamilton arrived in Turn 1 like a bull and should be penalized. After making this comment, Alonso told his engineer,

“We’ll see what they decide. He [Hamilton] was a little bit out of control. I guess they won’t decide anything because he is not Spanish.”

This comment clearly shows what Alonso feels about the FIA. However, after the Miami GP Sprint Race, former FIA steward Joaquín Verdegay spoke about Alonso’s anti-Spanish remarks and stated, “I don’t see that there is a persecution against the Spaniards.”