Defending world champion Fernando Alonso was accused of dangerous driving and hit with a two-second penalty after Felipe Massa clocked the times in Friday’s final opening practice session for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Alonso (25), of Spain, driving a Renault, was charged with ”brake-testing” Dutchman Robert Doombos, of the Red Bull team, making hand gestures at him and overtaking rival cars under yellow flags.
The two-second penalty he picked up for Saturday’s qualifying session will probably knock Alonso halfway back down the grid on a circuit where overtaking is virtually impossible.
That will give a major boost to seven-times champion German Michael Schumacher, who has won the last three races for Ferrari and cut Alonso’s lead from 25 points to just 11 with six races remaining.
The race stewards were alerted to Alonso’s erratic and dangerous driving and the incidents involving Doombos by race director Charlie Whiting and called both of them to give an explanation of what happened.
In a statement issued later, the stewards said that Alonso ”followed Doombos on to the pit straight, overtook him and whilst so doing made hand gestures toward him and then veered his car off the normal racing line toward the car driven by Doombos before reverting to the normal line on the other side of the track”.
It added that Alonso then entered turn one ahead of Doombos and ”caused his car to slow to an unusual and unexpected degree, causing Doombos to take avoiding action”.
The stewards said they regarded Alonso’s actions as unnecessary, unacceptable and dangerous and he was reprimanded and given two one-second time penalties, one for the brake-testing incident with Doombos and one for the overtaking under yellow flags.
Alonso was second fastest behind Schumacher’s Ferrari teammate Brazilian Massa in Friday’s practice session.
The young Ferrari driver clocked a best time of one minute and 21,778 seconds to outpace Alonso in his Renault by 1,3 seconds.
Alonso had suffered a further blow when Renault announced they were not refitting their controversial ”mass damper” system, which was banned at the German Grand Prix but could have been used in Hungary.
Massa’s best time was no improvement on the best time of the morning session and confirmed that on a dull, grey and dreary day at the slow Hungaroring circuit the weather was the real winner.
Italian Giancarlo Fisichella was third for Renault, but Schumacher was only seventh in the second Ferrari after an hour of activity that revealed precious little about Saturday’s qualifying or Sunday’s race prospects. — Sapa-AFP