Fernando Alonso says his spectacular run-in with Lance Stroll at the US Grand Prix was a racing incident, although one that he feared would end badly.
Alonso was drafting Stroll down COTA's back straight on lap 22 when he pulled out of the Aston Martin's slipstream, only for the Canadian to simultaneously veer slightly left in a defensive move.
In a scary scene, the contact caused the Alpine to go nearly vertical before coming to rest and brushing the barriers on the left side of the track.
While Stroll retired his heavily damaged Aston on the spot, Alonso was able to make his way back to the pits for a front wing change, after which he resumed his race.
Stroll later admitted that he had moved a bit late to cover his position, but Alonso reckoned the timing of both drivers' maneuvers had been "unfortunate".
"Honestly, when you see the thing on the TV, I think it’s a racing incident to be honest," said the two-time world champion, who was demoted after the race from P7 to P15 following a protest by Haas that Alpine is contesting.
"We move basically at the same time to the left, and that was the trigger of everything. So I think it was a very unfortunate moment for everyone.
"When you are at 300kph, those movements in one tenth of a second you move 200 metres. So if you see a slow motion and you go frame-by-frame, he will move a little bit later than me.
"If you go with normal speed, you see both cars more or less at the same time. So that’s why after looking on TV, I think there’s nothing you can do different."
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The incident was nevertheless a frightening moment for Alonso who feared an airborne, IndyCar type crash that would land him in the fence.
"It was not nice because when you are up in the air obviously you are not aware of where you are on track," he said.
"I felt that I was much more on the left, and obviously if you catch the lateral fence, the metallic one, then you spin in the air 360.
"You see this kind of accidents a lot in IndyCar and they are quite dangerous. So I thought that I was ending up on that fence."
Alonso and Stroll will be paired together next season at Aston Martin, but the Spaniard said the two drivers spoke in the stewards' office after the incident and had no issues.
"We’ve known each other for a long time, we were okay now in the stewards’ room," commented Alonso.
"I think it was more between our sporting directors than between us that I think we saw the incident with same eyes and our sporting directors they were seeing it in a completely different eye."
As he trundled back to the pits after the crash, Alonso was convinced that his day was done and dusted.
"I was surprised when they changed the tyres and the front wing and sent me out," he said.
"I said OK, you know, it’s just a test, but they will call me in on the next lap or whatever, but apparently no, the car was OK, when they checked it visually, everything was fine, so we kept going.
"The second [bit of] bad news was that we go to the end with that set of [hard] tyres, and it was 32 laps to the end, which I thought we will never make it.
"It was a good call from the team and a good strategy at the end. Finishing P7 [before the penalty] at the end with a car that was broken and we were last, it is quite a thing."
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