Fernando Alonso slammed his teammate Esteban Ocon after the Alpine pair clashed again in the sprint race of the Brazilian Grand Prix, and said he’s counting down the days until he can leave for Aston Martin.
The pair collided on the opening lap of the sprint as Ocon pushed his teammate wide at turn four and then took out part of Alonso‘s wing in a high-speed incident at the end of the lap, ruining both of their chances for points.
“No, not really, I don’t need to,” Alonso said when asked by Sky Sports F1 if he’d spoken to Ocon post-sprint. “It’s one more race until it’s over, finally”.
“Obviously it’s far from ideal when you touch on the first lap of the sprint race because it’s too short to come back without a safety car or anything.”
But Ocon hit back, blaming Alonso for the crash and saying he messed up a chance to attack their main constructors’ championship rivals.
“It’s unfortunate for the team what happened on lap one,” Ocon told Sky Sports. “I was trying to attack the McLaren, I took my line through four and Alonso came out of nowhere on the outside so we touched and from there on my race was pretty much over.
“We were in such good position, we’re now at the back with a lot of work to do tomorrow so it’s going to be important to work together to come back to the field. We’ve done that a thousand times in the last two years.”
Despite having the faster car for much of the season, Alpine have failed to distance themselves from McLaren in the constructors’ championship and now sit just five points ahead of their rivals in fourth place.
After qualifying sixth and seventh, Alonso will start the grand prix 15th and Ocon 18th whilst Lando Norris has a strong shot at points from seventh.
Ocon’s problem?
It’s not the first time the teammates have collided in a fractious second year at Alpine.
Ocon also had a tense relationship with Sergio Perez in two years together at Force India and Racing Point, and the pair were placed under team orders after a crash at Spa.
They collided again in Singapore in 2018 in an incident branded unacceptable by then-team boss Otmar Szafenauer.
And things turned physical with Max Verstappen at Interlagos in when Ocon tried to unlap himself and caught the Dutchman, costing him a likely race victory.
But Verstappen took things to the next level when he pushed Ocon after the race and was ordered to serve two days of public service for the incident.
However, Fernando Alonso‘s not always been the perfect teammate either, most notably with Lewis Hamilton in 2007 when he sabotaged the rookie Hamilton‘s qualifying in Hungary and then leaked documents detailing the ‘Spygate’ controversy before leaving the team.
Returning to the 2022 season, Alonso added: “I was very close to the wall in Jeddah I think, close to the wall in Budapest, today in turn 4 now here so sometimes it’s very competitive inside the team.
“It’s happened to him with Perez, with Verstappen here unlapping himself.”
