Fernando Alonso clarifies "dark side" comments with football analogy

Alpine

Alonso clarifies "dark side" comments with football analogy

Alonso has been unhappy with stewarding in recent races

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Monday 26 July 2021 13:37

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Fernando Alonso has likened the decision making by stewards to when a referee in football misses a handball and insisted he would "copy" his rivals if such driving is considered legal.

The Alpine driver was highly critical of the stewards at the Austrian Grand Prix after he believed he was overtaken by cars who had run wide at turn one at the Red Bull Ring.

Following the inaugural sprint qualifying event at the British GP, Alonso suggested he wanted to carry on with his "dark side" after making up multiple positions.

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Clarifying his comments, Alonso said: "I’ve always been a clean driver and I will remain a clean driver for all of my career.

"I am one of the few who doesn't have any points on the licence as well, but what I referred to was that I felt a little bit like an idiot.

"I said in Austria, by respecting the rules... and we try to speak with the race director and always try to say or blame other things that people were doing with not many answers, and that was strange.

"So, I don’t want to be blaming or crying every race for something that the others do, or the strategy in the first races didn’t bring us any solutions.

"So we understood that the solution is to do what the others are doing, that’s the only thing we can do."

Using football to explain his position, Alonso added: "We try to say to the referee ‘Look, they are playing with their hands in the penalty area’.

"But if the referee is doing nothing we understand we can also play with the hands in the penalty area, so we do that.

"We don’t need to do that, but because apparently some things are allowed in F1 of today, we copy and we don’t feel any more like we are out of the sport.

"So it’s not ‘dark side’, it’s just playing with the same rules as everyone else."