Isack Hadjar shrugged off complaints from a “grumpy” Fernando Alonso, who believes the Racing Bulls driver defended too much during Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Having run eighth early on, slow pitstop (9.33 seconds) for Alonso dropped him to 15th behind Hadjar, who was nursing an engine issue aboard his Racing Bulls for “the whole second half of the race or more”.
That left Hadjar down on power and harvesting more energy and slowing at the end of straights, leaving him vulnerable to Alonso with around 27 laps to go.
But Hadjar made a good fist of keeping Alonso behind despite the engine issue.
Alonso had a clear run at Hadjar into the Turn 7 left-hander on lap 36 of 62, but Hadjar covered off the inside of that corner and the subsequent Turn 8 right-hander.
Hadjar took a rather aggressive defensive line to the inside of Turn 10, which forced Alonso to back off, and there were further inch-perfect defences in the braking zones of Turn 14 and Turn 16/17.
There was another Alonso attack into Turn 1 on lap 37, but he got better traction outside of Turns 2/3 to finally force his way past - prompting another vintage Alonso F1 radio message, having already delivered a ‘if you speak to me every lap, I will disconnect the radio” earlier in the race.
“Trophy for the hero of [the] race,” Alonso sarcastically declared of Hadjar over the team radio, adding, “we lost five seconds with the hero of the day, congrats” with a smile you can almost here, accompanied by “it’s good fun”.
Alonso ultimately chased down an ailing Lewis Hamilton to claim seventh after the Ferrari driver’s penalty - six important points in Aston Martin’s pursuit of Racing Bulls in the fight for sixth in the constructors’ championship.
When asked about Hadjar after the race, Alonso said: “I think he had a little bit of an engine problem, from what I understood; on the straights, he was slow.
“Sometimes in some battles you need to know when it's better to fight and when it's not because probably the final result of the race could be a bit worse - for both, for sure, but for him in particular.
“I think some unnecessary risk, but I understand that this is Singapore and you fight hard and he did his best.”
Alonso added “some [of Hadjar’s] movements at 300km/h are a little bit over the line in Singapore.
“But everyone races as they want and there was no contact, nothing like that, so everything is fine.”
He also added a jibe at Racing Bull’s points tally of 72, which is four more than Aston Martin’s but not as high as it should be, according to Alonso.
“They have a very fast car, they don't have many points, so it's more of their problem,” Alonso added.
Hadjar was told of Alonso’s ‘hero of the race’ comments, saying, “I didn’t push him off the track, I kept it clean.
“He didn’t enjoy the fight, he’s really grumpy. Nothing I can do for him.”
You can understand Alonso’s frustration given how badly the issue was affecting Hadjar when he caught him.
It did cost Alonso time at a crucial juncture in his race, but Hadjar had a right to defend his position - just as Alonso has done many times with an ailing car, think of some of his top McLaren Honda drives even when the car was fully ‘healthy’. Plus, Hadjar stayed in the points until three laps to go, so he wasn’t on a hiding to nothing.
But Alonso also seemed to enjoy the fight more than the sarcastic radio snippet that was put to Hadjar would suggest.
There also seemed to be respect there from Alonso for such a valiant if fruitless defence, and it surely only helped to fuel a vintage Alonso drive that nullified the penalty of the slow pitstop and helped him gain important ground on Hadjar’s team.
