The 2023 Australian GP turned out to be the most eventful outing of the year up until now. Safety cars, red flags, chaotic restarts- this year’s Grand Prix in Melbourne had just about everything. For Fernando Alonso, however, a potentially jubilant weekend, turned out to have a disastrous ending to it.
Alonso, who stood on the podium in both Bahrain and Jeddah, was well on his way to finishing P3 once again. However, a late race red flag changed everything for the Spaniard and Aston Martin. After Kevin Magnussen’s crash, race control stopped the race and asked the drivers to return to the pit lane. They decided to restart the race a while later, with two laps of racing action remaining.
The race resumed in the form of a standing start, and Alonso got off to a good start to hold on to the third position. Unfortunately, Alonso’s compatriot Carlos Sainz went in too deep while trying to pass him, and made contact with the AMR-23 instead.
Fernando Alonso spins out in Melbourne
Sainz’s contact with Alonso resulted in the latter spinning out, and tumbling down to 12th position. A furious Alonso took to the team radio to vent out his frustration, not at Sainz, but at the race stewards, for red-flagging the race with just two laps to go.
Alonso felt that restarting with such a short amount of time remaining contributed to the chaos, which saw both him and his teammate move out of the points places. Elsewhere, both Alpine drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon ended up taking each other out of the race.
Because of Sainz’s collision, the Ferrari driver was later handed out a five-second time penalty.
