Fernando Alonso has apologised to Lewis Hamilton for his comment made over the radio during the Belgian Grand Prix following their first lap tangle at Les Combes.
The BWT Alpine F1 Team driver was defending from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer going down the Kemmel Straight only for the two to make contact at the chicane, with Hamilton being launched into the air as a result.
Hamilton was forced to retire from the race as a result – his first retirement of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season – while Alonso was able to keep going to take fifth.
In a spur of the moment radio outburst, Alonso was heavily critical of Hamilton, saying that his former team-mate only knows how to drive at the front.
“What an idiot closing the door from the outside,” said Alonso’s radio message. “I mean, we had a mega start but this guy only knows how to drive and start in first.”
Heading into the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, the Spaniard has come out and apologised for the outburst, feeling it was said at the ‘heat of the moment’, although he also feels more was made of it than was necessary by the press.
“It [has] been made a huge thing,” Alonso is quoted as saying by GPFans. “First of all, it is Lewis, he is a champion, a legend of our time and then when you say something – and I am sorry to repeat this – against a British driver, there is a huge media involvement after that.
“They have been saying a lot of things to Checo [Perez] to Carlos [Sainz], to me – if you say something to a Latin driver, everything is a bit more fun. If you say it to Lewis, it is a bit more serious.
“But yes, I apologise. I feel… I am not thinking about what I said. There was not much to blame in that moment, to be honest, looking at the replays because it was the first lap, and we are all very close together.
“The heat of the moment and the adrenaline of the moment, finally fighting for top two, top three, made me say those comments that I should not say.
“But at the same time, and as I said after the race, I said it was a racing incident in my opinion.”
