The 2 second Penalty . Who’s playing dirty?

Time now to take a closer look

Fernando Alonso recieves qualifying penalty 04 August 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix stewards penalised world champion Fernando Alonso for an incident involving Red Bull’s Robert Doornbos during Friday practice at the Hungaroring. Alonso gesticulated at Doornbos, whom he felt had held him up, and then appeared to deliberately weave and slow his Renault in front of the Dutchman’s car during the afternoon’s session.Stewards Tony Scott Andrews, Antonio Vasconcelos Tavares and Lajos Herczeg decided that Alonso’s actions were “unnecessary, unacceptable and dangerous”, and awarded him a one second time penalty to be applied to his fastest lap time in each of the qualifying sessions, Q1, Q2 and Q3. Additionally, Alonso received a similar penalty for overtaking another car after the session had finished, under waved yellow flags. He will thus get an aggregated cumulative penalty of two seconds in Q1, Q2 and Q3, effectively damning his chances on a circuit on which overtaking is virtually impossible. SOURCE : Official Formula1™ website

Wow!! I thought there was a single incidence which cost Alonso a 2 second penalty in each of the qualifying sessions. Seems to be a little more complicated. Gestulating at a driver who will not even race with you later in the weekend, and that too in practice? Disgusting. This is not a sign of a driver who deserves to be on top. The sense of maturity has been missing in the Renault camp ever since they came into limelight.

Schumacher gets two-second penalty 05 August 2006 Michael Schumacher has also been given a two-second penalty to be added to each of his qualifying laps after stewards found that he had passed two cars under red flags in this morning’s practice session. The practice session was red-flagged when Button’s engine exploded and Schumacher was ruled to have overtaken other cars. The penalty means that both he and fellow championship rival Alonso will suffer the same qualifying penalty this afternoon. SOURCE: F1Racing.NET

What is Schumi upto?

What has Schumacher done in Hungary? Friday practice saw Fernando Alonso being penalised for his act. Saturday practice brought trouble for the Ferrari driver. Was it deliberate? If this race had brought better result for Schumi with penalty only on Fernando, maybe the critics would have said that the German capitalized on his chance and the Hungarian Grand Prix was the turning point in the season. With a man like Michael Schumacher making a decision, you never know whats going to come up. Has it been like this ever before? Violation of rules from such a mature driver? Well, if he can park his car in the middle of the track in Monaco, he can also invite a penalty similar to the one given to Alonso. He likes to fight, and its better if its on track than behind the scenes. If this move was deliberate, it may cost Schumi the world championship. And if it has been just another chance that both the front runners got penalised in the same race, with exactly the same punishment, there is no luckier guy in Formula 1 than Fernando Alonso.

Well, what I thought changed when I came across this, and this is simply disgusting

Schumi hints at foul play 05 August 2006 The stern look Michael Schumacher was happy with himself after minimising his two-second qualifying penalty to start tomorrow’s race from eleventh while championship rival Alonso will start from fifteenth. However, he seemed to suggest that Alonso played a part in his penalty and that it might not have been entirely fair play. “It was unrealistic for us to get into the top ten, although I wasn’t far off,” Schumacher said. “It’s okay and I guess worked out pretty well. Obviously you approach the session differently knowing you have the penalty but it worked out okay.” On his penalty Schumacher said, “If you watch the pictures you can see what I did and understand why I did it and Fernando was certainly involved in that incident.” When asked whether he thought Alonso slowed down on purpose so that Schumacher had to pass him under red flags in practice the German replied, “You said that I didn’t.” SOURCE : F1Racing.NET

Talk about Renault and Fernando Alonso. To be honest, this isnt a surprise. Whenever the spaniard leads the race, and there is a safety car period, he unnecessarily slows down his car to force others to brake hard. He does this in order to control the pace of the race, when no overtaking is allowed while running behind the safety car. But, what he does in efect is upset the balance of the drivers behind him and force them to brake harder and scrub their tyres. He did exactly the same in Friday practice, the reason for which he was penalised. Its not funny to brake test the driver behind you, maybe he deserved a more severe punishment. When you are at such a high level of sporting you dont play dirty. Knowing that he had a 2 second penalty for every Qualifying session, he probably tried something similar in Saturday Practice. Maybe if the video clip of the incidence is sometime released, things become a little more clear. But I have every reason to believe that Fernando could have done that. He has picked up some traits from the team boss Flavio Braitore who needs to be suspended upside down from a support (wrapped up in a net) and laughed at as the race goes on.

Though the act of overtaking two cars during Red flags cannot be entirely due to Fernando Alonso, but it does appear that the Spaniard played it dirty. Renault will soon become famous for these actions. And it depends on you, how you see it. You can call them ways of gaining popularity or methods of become thoroughly unpopular.

The current track positions do not look good for both the drivers competing for championship, but its going to be interesting to see what strategy they adopt. The fight will be both on and off track. The Hungarian Grand Prix of 2006 is going to be a cracker. And who will watch at the front of the grid, my eyes will be on the drivers in 6th and 7th rows.

© 2006 Kamal Agarwal