Alonso halfway to ban after penalty for Sainz collision in Sprint

Fernando Alonso has accumulated more penalty points after being deemed responsible for a collision with Carlos Sainz in the Sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Aston Martin driver was running second for the first part of the race before being overtaken by Max Verstappen, and then was driving defensively to hold off a queue of cars including Sainz, Sergio Perez, Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris for the final top-three spot.

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Late in the Sprint, Sainz managed to find his way past around the outside of Turn 7 as the pair made light contact, but Alonso then tried to re-take the position into Turn 9 and pushed both off the track with another touch.

The stewards decided that Alonso was at fault for the collision – that damaged Sainz’s car and gave himself a puncture – and handed him a 10-second time penalty as well as three penalty points.

While the time penalty is redundant due to the fact that Alonso retired from the Sprint as a result of his puncture, the penalty points move him to a total of six accumulated in the 12-month period. Alonso has picked all six points up in the past three race weekends, with the first three coming for the incident with George Russell at the end of the Australian Grand Prix.

If a driver picks up 12 penalty points across a single 12-month period then they receive an automatic one-race ban.

Speaking before the penalty was handed out, Alonso claimed Sainz was to blame for not leaving him more room at Turn 9 during their fight.

“As we didn't have many tires, we kept Max two laps behind, with Carlos it was some more laps,” Alonso said. "Turn 7 I think we were evenly matched, then in Turn 8 I tried to go to the outside, but he opened the line to not leave me room, so, in Turn 9 I did the same thing he did in Turn 8.

“I did the same thing he did in Turn 8, I tried to go to the inside to not leave him room on the line, but in Turn 8 I opened up so we didn't touch, in Turn 9 he didn't open up, so we touched and in the end I got the worst part because I had to retire,. But it doesn't hurt much because it would only be one or two points and it was fun, good for that part.”