The Safety Car that came out in the last part of the Silverstone race after the abandonment of Esteban Ocon grouped the grid, and at the restart we experienced a vibrant and exciting three-way battle between Leclerc, Hamilton and Pérez .
After Carlos Sainz overtook Leclerc taking advantage of his soft and new tyres, the Monegasque, with used hard tyres, had to defend himself as best he could from Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Pérez, both also on soft tires and in better condition.
The duel was exciting, to the limit, but within the legal limits, while far behind Max Verstappen was much less sporty and fair with Mick Schumacher. And behind the trio fighting for second and third place, someone appeared smelling blood, a blue car with number 14.
Fernando Alonso came very close to Hamilton, and was glued to the action waiting for some mistake or problem that would allow him to scratch a podium. And not only him, but also his director, Otmar Szafnauer , who admitted that he saw himself celebrating a podium.
Asked by Motorsport.com if he was expecting an incident that would put Alonso in the top three, Szafnauer replied: “I was hoping one of the guys up front would take the others away, like they did with the AlphaTauris. I was visualizing it happening.” something similar and a podium celebration, but it didn’t happen.”
The Romanian director of Alpine was also asked to assess Alonso’s performance and, as so often, he did so while also pronouncing his teammate’s name: “Yes, and I think Esteban would have been seventh. He was ahead of Verstappen at that moment of retirement and would have finished seventh. But you know, the what-ifs. But yeah, great race, ahead of Lando at the end, very good.”
For his part, Alonso, who complained about Leclerc’s maneuvers and also mentioned some of Pérez’s, alleging that he should be third or fourth, also saw podium opportunities.
“Yeah, it was a lot of fun at the end and obviously we weren’t in the mix but we were right behind and saw all the action up front, we were fifth so I was hoping two cars maybe would touch and the podium would be there for us. , but in the end they ran very hard but with a lot of respect, so it was fun to watch them from behind.”
Alpine (via Alonso) informed the FIA of the presence of the activists at Silverstone
One of the events of the weekend was when, after establishing the red flag period for Zhou’s hair-raising accident, several activists jumped onto the circuit and sat on a straight where several cars passed.
Many drivers talked about it, and also Szafnauer, who revealed that Alonso was one of the first to see them and that they were the ones who notified the FIA: “I didn’t see them. Fernando did. And he did a very good job to avoid crashing with them”.
“We spoke on the radio and he didn’t know they were protesters, he said there were fans on the track. The reason I think he informed us is so that we could inform the FIA, which is what we did.
In the end, there was no need to lament greater evils and the police arrested seven activists.
