After a couple of hours of on track action in Malaysia it is easy to forget that title challenger Fernando Alonso crashed out on the first corner of lap two.
The Ferrari driver had slightly nudged the back end of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel during the opening corners of the Grand Prix.
As the opening lap unfolded the Ferrari’s front wing began to slowly breakaway, leaving a trial of sparks as the Ferrari raced around at full speed.
His pace proved to be so good that despite the damage, Ferrari opted to leave Alonso out instead of immediately bringing him in to pit and change his front wing.
Alonso had kept pace with Sebastian Vettel at the front of the race and had kept Mark Webber behind him, maintaining second place.
But just a few hundred yards from the pit-wall, that situation changed, Mark Webber pulled alongside Alonso to take second place and just as he did, his front wing collapsed underneath him and Alonso crashed out into the gravel trap on the first corner.
‘Once you’ve seen the result, in hindsight, it’s easy to say it would’ve been better to come in for a pit-stop. But it’s a decision that has to be made in a matter of seconds, during which we thought that I could hold on for another lap to make the most of the pit-stop and also switch to dry tyres,’ Alonso told Sky Sports.
The failure to score points was of course eventually compounded by likely title rival Sebastian Vettel going on to win the race and take 25-points. Giving him a 22-point advantage over Alonso.
But the Spaniard insists that he decision not to pit will not prove too costly in the title picture.
Alonso added: ‘the race simulations state that if I would have stopped to change the nose, I would have finished ninth or tenth, so we didn’t lose anything. The problem wasn’t not coming in; the damage was done in the collision and it’s something that we will try to avoid in the future.’
Discussing what was going through his mind when at around 300kph his front wing collapsed underneath his car, lifting his front tyres off the ground and making the two-time Formula One World Champion a passenger in his own car he added: ‘I was thinking about not crashing into Webber. My front tyres weren’t in contact with the ground, I was going at 280 km/h and was running the risk of wiping Mark out, which would have been very dangerous. Luckily the car went straight on.’
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Alonso backs pit-stop call
