As Speedcafe reports, Fernando Alonso walked away from Sunday's race in Austin with his car destroyed and a score to settle. The Aston Martin driver had qualified 12th, but a chaotic opening lap pinched him between the Williams of Alex Albon and the Haas of Esteban Ocon. Albon lunged down the inside, the pair collided, and Alonso's afternoon was effectively ended before it truly began. The two-time world champion crawled home 16th, just one spot ahead of his rival, leaving behind a performance he felt should have yielded a top-10 finish.
Alonso did not hold back when assessing the move or the perpetrator. “Albon forgot that corner 11 was there and he had to turn left,” Alonso said. He went further, taking aim at the broader field: “I think the quality of the drivers in the lower third of the grid is very low, as we saw today with Alex.” He noted that Aston Martin's midfield standing leaves them exposed to drivers who are simply not performing at the required standard, admitting the team must build a faster machine to stay out of trouble.
The damage to Alonso's machine was staggering. Inspecting it in parc fermé, the Spaniard revealed that half of the floor was missing, costing him at least half a second per lap yet somehow leaving the car semi-competitive. It was a bitterly painful loss of points in the constructors' championship, where Aston Martin sits 10th on seven points, trailing Williams by five after Lance Stroll finished 15th.
Yet the stewards saw no reason to penalize Albon, and the Williams driver offered a starkly different reading of the chaos. Albon actually enjoyed the fight, noting that racing Alonso is always fun and fair. “Maybe he thought I was a bit over the edge, I don’t know,” Albon said, pointing out that Ocon's presence on the outside pinched the space and forced him onto the curb with a broken wing of his own.
Meanwhile, at the very front of the field, Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli dominated to win the race. That victory pushed his championship advantage out to 123 points, leaving him needing just two points at next weekend's Mexico City Grand Prix to secure his maiden world title.
