George Russell and Fernando Alonso have been called by the stewards after the Britton crashed right at the end of the race as he was chasing the Spaniard for P6.
Russell was on Alonso’s tail as he was trying to get past him in the dying stages of the race. While they were approaching turn 6, the Mercedes driver was caught off guard as he saw the Aston Martin getting closer under braking more than the previous laps.
“My take is that I have gone off, and that is on me, but I was half a second behind Fernando 100m before the corner and then suddenly he came towards me extremely quick and I was right in his gearbox,” Russell said.
“I don’t know if he has got a problem or not. We are off to see the stewards, so that is a bit bizarre in a circumstance like this. I’ve got nothing more to say right now, I need to see everything, I am disappointed to end the race like that.”
Russell said that he didn’t know exactly what happened and why Alonso seemed to slow down that much. He won’t comment any further until he sees the bigger picture and has all the data to analyze what went wrong.
“We’ve already seen the data of that, so I am not going to accuse him of anything until we’ve seen further.
“But I was right behind him for many, many laps, and I was half a second behind him approaching the corner and then suddenly he slowed up dramatically and got back on the power.
“I wasn’t expecting it, it caught me by surprise. That part is on me, but it is interesting that we’ve been called to the stewards, so I am intrigued to see what they have to say.”
Meanwhile, Alonso also shared his side of the story. He admitted he was having issues with the battery in the last 15 laps of the race, but he wasn’t focusing on the car behind him, he was pushing to keep the position, so he was looking ahead.
“I was focusing in front of me and not behind. I had some issues for the last 15 laps or something on the battery, on the deployment,” Alonso told Sky Sports F1. “I was struggling a little bit at the end of the race, but, I cannot focus on the cars behind. But he’s okay, apparently. I saw the car and I was very worried.
“I knew that he was coming, and he was on the DRS distance for already five or six laps. So yeah, it was very close. I was just doing qualifying laps and trying to maximize the pace. It was not an easy race, not an easy weekend in general in terms of pace.
“Today we got lucky with the strategy and when Lewis was off and that virtual safety car, but we cannot hide that the pace was difficult the whole weekend.”