Fernando Alonso spotted in conversation with FIA president after ‘gross errors’ accusation

Fernando Alonso speaking with Mohammed Ben Sulayem

Fernando Alonso has accused the FIA of making a “gross error” with the timing of the red flag for Yuki Tsunoda’s Turn 5 crash in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Putting in a lap in the final few minutes of qualifying, Alonso was heading into the final corner on his hot lap when the red flags were shown.

Fernando Alonso wasn’t happy with the FIA’s actions in Hungary

Forced to abort his lap, the Spaniard qualified in seventh place as he was one of a few who didn’t take the green light when the session was restarted with two minutes 23 seconds on the clock.

Alonso believes the FIA were too quick to stop the session.

“The FIA sometimes gets it right and sometimes makes gross errors,” he told DAZN.

“Today they made one, because they red-flagged when I was in the last corner, which is surprising. When there is an accident at Turn 8 [Turn 5] they normally wait for the cars to complete their laps, or that’s the spoken rule.”

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The Aston Martin driver was one of two drivers, the other being Max Verstappen, who didn’t queue for the restart but that turned out to be a damp squib.

The McLarens didn’t bother to complete their laps, already 1-2 on the timesheet, with Daniel Ricciardo in the VCARB the only driver to improve his lap time.

Alonso explained why he didn’t join the queue in the pit lane having initially been waved into parc ferme by track officials.

“Going into the pit lane, Lance and I were put into parc ferme, they closed the pit lane and put us into parc ferme,” he said.

“We got out of the car, then they told us that Q3 was going to restart. We got back in the car, they buckled us in, and because I had no more tyres, I didn’t go out again.”

But while he wasn’t happy with the two incidents, he concedes he probably wouldn’t have qualified higher than P7.

“I had been improving by a tenth and a half until that last corner when the red flag came out and it probably doesn’t change anything,” he said.

“But this going into the parc ferme, then opening it again and that doesn’t normally happen.”

After qualifying Alonso was spotted in conversation with Mohammed Ben Sulayem, gesturing to the FIA president as he seemingly voiced his frustrations.

It’s not the first time this year the Spaniard has made his case to the FIA president, doing so at the Miami Grand Prix when he felt driver nationality may be influencing penalties.

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