What an idiot, he hit me! Alonso harshly criticised Lewis Hamilton during the live coverage of the Belgian GP. What did he say about him?

The opening of the Belgian Grand Prix brought a lot of interesting battles for the standings and at least two very dramatic moments. The first one, however, was taken care of by Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, who clashed on the first lap. The Spanish legend then harshly criticised him via team radio.

The 14th race of the season, the Belgian Grand Prix, got off to a very dramatic start, with Alonso and Hamilton colliding on the first lap. And how did this incident happen?

The seven-time champion tried to get on the outside of Alonso’s third place at the Les Combes corner. But Hamilton didn’t give the Spanish legend enough room on the inside of the corner and literally shut him down. The ensuing collision was inevitable.

Alonso then harshly criticised Hamilton over the team radio. “What an idiot, he hit me! He closed the door on the outside. We had a very good start, but this guy can only race when he starts from first place.”

The collision was subsequently dealt with by the sports commissioners, but after an investigation it was deemed a racing incident and no penalty was given to either driver. In addition, Hamilton shut down his car after a few more moments and retired from the Belgian Grand Prix.

It should be added, a similar incident happened to Hamilton in the 2014 season when he collided with his former teammate Nico Rosberg at an identical corner. And in his post-race interview, Alonso recalled this in his statement.

“In my opinion, it was a mistake on his part to close the door like that. We’ve seen many times in Turn 5 that it can be done differently and the same thing happened to him with Rosberg a few years ago,” Alonso said.

“I think it was a classic first-lap incident. It happens, especially in this corner. You do a lot of things, you cut turn six and you go into turn seven. It’s a tricky part of the circuit, it was just a racing incident.

I was very disappointed when I get a good start from the first or second row and this kind of thing happens, I was frustrated at that moment. But he admitted his mistake and that’s appreciated,” added the double world champion.

Hamilton admitted his mistake after the race and admitted that the collision was his fault. Alonso nevertheless finished the Belgian Grand Prix in fifth place, with Esteban Ocon finishing seventh. So it was a solid race weekend for Alpine.

If it wasn’t for Ferrari’s mistake…

But Alonso could have finished a place lower in the Belgian Grand Prix if not for another strange decision by Ferrari. On the penultimate lap, the Italian team called fifth-placed Charles Leclerc into the pits for the softest set of tyres, marked in red.

The intention was quite clear – to change to this fastest tyre specification and then attempt to set the fastest lap of the race. Formula One awards one extra championship point for doing so. But Ferrari probably didn’t calculate the 19-second gap between fifth-placed Leclerc and sixth-placed Alonso.

But that was the cut-off time for a pit stop at Spa. Alonso thus overtook Leclerc on lap 43 and moved up to fifth. However, the Ferrari-owned Monegasque returned the overtake on the final 44th lap.

However, due to a five-second penalty for exceeding the maximum speed in the pits, Leclerc dropped to sixth place behind Alonso in the results. And that would not have happened if Ferrari had simply left their driver on the track on lap 43.

“That’s all right. Ferrari does strange things and this was just another one of them,” Alonso concluded.

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