Jolyon Palmer recalled a story about an incident at the 2017 Italian GP in Formula 1 involving Fernando Alonso that enraged the Spaniard and went viral.
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Renault driver at the time, Palmer and the two-time world champion, then McLaren’s main driver, ended up colliding at Monza while fighting for position at the second chicane. It turns out Fernando got angry when the opponent did not give the position back and in the end, the stewards gave the Briton a 5-second penalty.
The Spaniard got upset with the whole situation and later on, Jolyon ended up retiring, to the delight of the two-time champion, who soon came on the radio to say it was ‘karma’ – it turns out that later, Fernando also retired.
“You know what’s funny about this? First, he didn’t have straight-line speed. It was the peak of the McLaren-Honda era. I was trying to overtake him; I think I had started from the pit lane or something like that. He was obviously defending like a lion, so in the end, I managed to get alongside him on the outside of the corner, but I ended up cutting the chicane,” he said on the F1 Nation podcast.
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“I would say he forced me off the track. The stewards, on that occasion, didn’t agree with me and gave me a five-second penalty. You know what? I didn’t even care, because I managed to build a gap, did the pit stop and came back ahead of him. It was such a small detail in my race — that moment of overtaking Fernando and receiving the five-second penalty, I had even forgotten about it. About 15 laps later, I retired from the race with a hydraulic problem,” he continued.
“So I got out of the car, went to do the interviews, ‘ah, another tough day, reliability isn’t good’, and all that. I grabbed an ice cream at the back of the canteen. Sunday afternoon, I thought: ‘I worked hard, I’m going to treat myself’. I was there, literally devouring a Magnum, with the TV on in the Renault area, when I heard Fernando asking: ‘Where’s Palmer?’. I was there with the ice cream in my mouth, thinking: ‘Wow, he really got bothered by that’. Honestly, I didn’t care at all.”
“I couldn’t believe he was so involved with that. But it was typical Fernando Alonso: something so silly and insignificant, in a fight for 14th place, really got into his head,” he concluded.
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