Stuart
5th August 2007, 02:22 AM
Goes to..... Fernando Alonso.
For the most disgusting tactic of deliberately holding up HIS TEAMMATE in pit lane so that his teammate missed the ability to complete one final qualifying run (and with high probability, scoring pole position).
I cannot remember the last time I ever saw such an appalling display of poor sportsmanship towards a teammate.
Simply, my take (and in concurrence with expert witnesses (well ok, the commentators), and particularly the McLaren team boss who appeared to also believed it to be deliberate) is:
Alonso was getting a final tyre change, with his teammate (Hamilton) queued up behind him. Alonso was held by the team to get clear track position, but when 'sent' by the team, delayed launching by an additional 5 seconds, which caused Hamilton to miss the final run by 4.5 seconds. May not sound like much, but races are won and lost by 1/100th of a second, so timing the final run to within 0.5 seconds is not uncommon, and just goes to show the precision of the sport. If this was done to another team, that would be one thing, and the official protests would be extremely vocal and would potentially result in significant penalty. To do this to your teammate....I'm stunned.
Alonso is a coward. He is being soundly beaten by a rookie driver, and has to stoop to such disgusting tactics to gain small victories.
For the most disgusting tactic of deliberately holding up HIS TEAMMATE in pit lane so that his teammate missed the ability to complete one final qualifying run (and with high probability, scoring pole position).
I cannot remember the last time I ever saw such an appalling display of poor sportsmanship towards a teammate.
Simply, my take (and in concurrence with expert witnesses (well ok, the commentators), and particularly the McLaren team boss who appeared to also believed it to be deliberate) is:
Alonso was getting a final tyre change, with his teammate (Hamilton) queued up behind him. Alonso was held by the team to get clear track position, but when 'sent' by the team, delayed launching by an additional 5 seconds, which caused Hamilton to miss the final run by 4.5 seconds. May not sound like much, but races are won and lost by 1/100th of a second, so timing the final run to within 0.5 seconds is not uncommon, and just goes to show the precision of the sport. If this was done to another team, that would be one thing, and the official protests would be extremely vocal and would potentially result in significant penalty. To do this to your teammate....I'm stunned.
Alonso is a coward. He is being soundly beaten by a rookie driver, and has to stoop to such disgusting tactics to gain small victories.