AFTER ONE of the worst scandals to emerge from a sport continually mired in a mess of its own making, Formula One now waits to see how Fernando Alonso’s reputation emerges from the World Motor Sport Council hearing in Paris on Monday.
If Alonso is shown to have had no knowledge of the plot to engineer his win in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, then Ferrari are likely to sign the Spaniard for 2010, the knock-on effect of which will be a long-awaited shuffle of driver contracts further down the pecking order.
But, if Alonso is implicated in the extraordinary deed that led to the departure of team principal Flavio Briatore and his chief engineer, Pat Symonds, the former world champion will be less attractive to Ferrari despite his reputation as one of the best drivers in Formula One. That, and Renault’s possible ban from F1, is the here-and-now implication of the case.
The implications for the sport as a whole will be the main topic of discussion this weekend as motor racing’s old guard gather in Sussex for the Goodwood Revival. Given the way the race proceeded, it will be legitimate for people such as Stirling Moss, fresh from his 80th birthday, to ask whether Alonso started in Singapore without the knowledge that his team-mate, Nelson Piquet, would try to throw the race in Alonso’s favour by deliberately crashing.
Alonso’s race strategy had been compromised by a technical problem during qualifying which had him start from 15th. The plan had been to make three pit stops as opposed to the favoured two, the subsequent light load of fuel at the start giving Alonso the momentum to pass three cars on the first lap. But, even allowing for the short first stint, Alonso was called in on lap 12, two laps earlier than planned, because he was snared behind a slower car.
According to radio transcripts, Alonso did not question this instruction which went against what should have been the agreed plan. Alonso was alone in the field of 20 cars to make his stop; Piquet crashed two laps later, triggering the sequence of events that eventually allowed Alonso to move into the lead as everyone else refuelled while the safety car was in operation. But Alonso should not have known that was going to happen when ordered to stop on lap 12.
Ross Brawn, during his time at Ferrari, commented that Michael Schumacher would never question any command from the pit wall, no matter how strange it might seem.
“Michael would focus on the driving and leave the team to take care of everything else,” Brawn said.
“If we told him to stop, he would. If we said: ‘Michael, if we are to win this race, you need to find a second a lap for the next 16 laps’, he would do that.”
Alonso would have acted exactly the same way.
Guardian Service
