Fernando Alonso let rip at Williams’ Alex Albon after contact between their cars on the opening lap of the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. It cost the Aston Martin driver four places in Austin and left him with floor damage, which compromised the AMR26 for the rest of the race.
The two-time world champion lost one position at the start from 12th on the grid as Esteban Ocon surged from 15th to 11th. Albon picked up three places with a clean launch to run 14th and challenged Alonso for position all the way through the Esses on the opening lap.
At Turn 11, Alonso made a bid to pass the squabbling Haas cars on the inside line into the left-hander, but Albon had also launched on a similar trajectory. The Williams was already committed as the gap narrowed, and Albon’s front-right wheel crunched into Alonso’s left-hand bargeboard and floor edge.
Alonso was pushed onto the outside kerb, losing a further four places. The damage to the Aston Martin’s floor was clearly visible from Albon’s on-board camera. Alonso recovered to 12th place at the chequered flag, but was clearly disgruntled when he spoke to the media.
“That was the biggest damage,” he said. “I think we lost half a second or more [per lap]. The car is destroyed; I saw it in parc ferme. Half of the floor is not there. I don’t know how we kept on going and how we were semi-competitive.
“I imagine if the car was in one piece, probably today the points were a strong possibility because we were running P12 with half a car. I lost even further pieces of the floor. I couldn’t turn. So we stopped. I thought about retiring the car. I was ready to switch it off.
Alexander Albon, Williams, Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images
“But then they put a new front wing and I went out again. Obviously the car was turning ok to the right and not ok to the left for the last 15 laps of the race. But we wanted to finish and collect a little bit more data.
“When you start at the back, there is this risk always. I think the quality of the drivers in the low third of the grid is very low. As we saw today with Alex. So I think we need to improve the car and start a little bit higher up.”
The contact wasn’t deemed worthy of investigation by the stewards, being a typical consequence of three cars fighting for the same patch of real estate at that corner.
“It felt like there was a car on the right side of Fernando,” explained Albon. “And he gave Fernando enough space as if he thought there was only one car on his inside. But then I was on the inside of Fernando.
“So then I think it pinched and I tried to get out of the way and get on the kerb. But I didn’t make good of it. So I imagine he got damage. I know I got damaged as we were driving around with a broken wing for the race.”
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