Hulkenberg unimpressed with Alonso's Australian GP tactics

Nico Hulkenberg says he “wasn’t very impressed” with Fernando Alonso’s tactics defending against George Russell in Melbourne, after the Spaniard was penalized for slowing in a straight line.

Alonso was given a retrospective drive-through penalty -- converted into 20 seconds of race time -- after the Australian Grand Prix due to the way he defended against Russell on the penultimate lap, as the Mercedes drivers lost control at Turn 6 and crashed heavily. Hulkenberg says the corner in question made it the wrong place to perform such a move, even if he accepts drivers do slow in such a manner in different situations.

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“My personal view, and what I saw, I wasn’t very impressed with Fernando’s tactics there to be honest,” Hulkenberg said. “Because Melbourne after all is kind of a street circuit, it’s quite narrow there, we approach that corner with 260/270 clicks, it’s a blind exit, and if for whatever reason the flag system or someone is late and one of us would have t-boned George, I think the outcome and the way he feels might have also been quite different.

“While that tactic is quite a common one in Formula 1, in that particular corner, with that speed, with a blind exit, I think it’s the wrong corner to do it, and it produced quite a dangerous situation.

“What I also don’t understand is right after on the radio he’s talking about throttle issues or throttle stuck or not stuck, but then later on he doesn’t talk about that anymore, he just talks about it being standard procedure and tactics. That doesn’t align -- he seems to have changed his opinion there. Like I say, I wasn’t very impressed with that, personally.”

Given his acknowledgement of the specific layout of that corner at Albert Park, Hulkenberg says it’s also important the location and angle of the barrier is revisited to stop cars bouncing back onto the track after Russell ended up on his side in the middle of the circuit.

“It’s the wrong speed range, the wrong corner, and I think also the shift or the change -- the deceleration -- was quite a big delta, obviously. It’s easy to overreact and lose the rear of the car like happened to George.

“We’ve also seen with that corner -- last year with Alex [Albon] who crashed there -- that barrier puts a car back onto the circuit. We need to look at that and change something there because that’s really not good when you come around that corner and you have a car in the middle of the track.”