F1 Bad Sportsmanship Award for the year

**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.

**rtfarty** · 5th August 2007, 09:04 AM

Read the latest news on the incident from Ron Dennis. He swears it is the truth.
The link is www.itv-f1.com

**Stuart** · 5th August 2007, 12:55 PM

Thanks for the link!

Ron should run for government - goes from being furious with Alonso at the time, then rewrites history (and his reaction) when Alonso is penalised by the stewards, and now claims it was Hamilton that caused it. Caused it? How does Alonso sitting in pit lane change any real situation with his car and the apparent fuel load issue?

Alonso's engineer was holding Alonso? So who is the guy with the lollypop getting instructions from? Ferrari? The guy with the lollypop (that tells the driver to go) doesn't make up his own plan - he's instructed when to release the driver by ....the engineer.

I'm surprised the race stewards stepped in - but goes to show, you can't screw up another driver's race deliberately, even if it is your teammate. Causing Alonso to drop to 6th on the grid is a big statement about how the stewards viewed the apparent strategy, and Ron's claims.

**dazzler** · 5th August 2007, 07:17 PM

What, in formula 1. Who'd a thought

**Buzzer** · 5th August 2007, 07:28 PM

I don't think Formula 1 is a sport. It is about making money.

**Lignum** · 5th August 2007, 07:31 PM

Does this mean Mark Webber will have a chance of winning

**Stuart** · 5th August 2007, 11:00 PM

No.

**Buzzer** · 6th August 2007, 08:47 AM

He actually finished a race on the weekend!!!!

**Driver** · 6th August 2007, 11:22 AM

Don't be too hard on Mark Webber. Aside from the ongoing problems with his car(s), have a think about this:

Several years ago, I recall reading some comments made by Innes Ireland (for those who don't know the name, he was a F1 driver in the 60s). He said that, at any point in time, there are probably no more than 30 people who are capable of competing at Formula One level and of those, maybe six who are capable of winning a Formula One race.

Not much has changed.

**Stuart** · 6th August 2007, 02:15 PM

Not having a go at Mark - hard to win if your car can't finish, or if it does finish is too far off the pace.

Anyone remember Mark's efforts at the '99 Le Mans?

**rtfarty** · 8th August 2007, 08:51 PM

Looks like the spat between Hamilton and Alonso was started by Lewis refusing to follow team orders in the fuel burning laps and not letting Fernando past him. His excuse was that Raikonen would have gone past as well and he reportedly told Ron Dennis to"Go and f***** swivel"

Shows that he is looking after No. 1 and is not going to be pushed around by someone who has a reputation to protect.

Should make for some pretty intersting racing till the end of the season.

Hamilton is the name everyone is talking about over here and he has got the TV viewing figures a lot higher than normal.

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F1 Bad Sportsmanship Award for the year

Alonso incident

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