The competitive trajectory Aston Martin has taken in 2023 has guaranteed an entertaining 2023 championship, at least for Fernando Alonso fans. After what would’ve felt like ages, Alonso is finally back in what F1 fans like to call competitive machinery. A testament to this fact is Alonso’s hat trick of podiums he’s scored in 2023. Bahrain, Saudi and now Australia. But it is his latest Australian GP triumph that has been marred with controversy.

Fellow Spaniard tagged Alonso, and Carlos Sainz at the restart, dropping him down from the podium places. A bevy of other incidents meant that before the cars could’ve escaped Sector 1, the race was red-flagged again. The powers that be at the FIA decided to cancel the restart and restore the order. As a consequence, Alonso was reinstated to P3 while Sainz suffered a miserable fate.

Aston Martin admits to Fernando Alonso’s luck

Obviously, in the aftermath of it all, Alonso’s podium was made liable to all kinds of scrutiny and comments. One such suggestion that has been making the rounds is that Alonso essentially robbed Sainz off the podium. However, his team boss, Mike Krack, has come back with a fitting reply.

He was quoted by Motorsport.com as saying, “As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion. But in the end it all worked out. It was important that the car was still solid and drivable at this point because we saw some people’s cars damaged. I have to say we were lucky at this point.” [translated via Google Translate]

“It wasn’t a stolen podium because we were in the position we were in before that. So I think it’s okay, but of course there was a luck factor as well.”

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Post-race, Sainz was fuming about the penalty. Alonso was too.

Fernando Alonso’s blunt response to Carlos Sainz’s time penalty

After the incident at the restart, Sainz was handed a five-second time penalty for the incident. Naturally, the Spanish racing ace was fuming at this decision of the stewards that dramatically pushed him out of the points.

When Alonso was posed with the severity of the penalty, he said, “The penalty’s too harsh I think. Because on lap one it is very difficult always to judge what the grip level is, and I think we don’t go intentionally into another car, because we know that we risk our car and our final position. I didn’t see the replay properly, but for me it feels too harsh,” as quoted by RacingNews365.com.

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