Russell's Engineer's Sly Dig At Alonso Post Chequered Flag In Japan Revealed
F1Friday, 12 April 2024 at 10:30
George Russell's engineer Marcus Dudley had a cheeky dig at Fernando Alonso after the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix.
Fernando Alonso finished in P6 during the fourth round of the 2024 season in Japan. Despite not having the fastest car around, the Spanish Matador is able to keep putting in excellent results for his team in every single race.
The 42-year-old is the most experienced driver in Formula 1, and he uses his immense experience to his advantage with some clever tricks almost every race weekend.
Even his team principal called the double World Champion an "old fox." In Saudi Arabia, he intentionally confused his rivals with made-up messages about tire degradation on his own team's radio.
In Australia, Alonso broke earlier into the corner to gain an advantage over Russell on the final lap. However, the stewards deemed this instance potentially dangerous and controversially awarded him a 20-second penalty.
In Japan, Alonso tried to use Oscar Piastri as his shield in defense against George Russell. He lifted on purpose at some parts of the track so that the McLaren driver behind him could keep up and stay within DRS.
By doing so, Russell had big trouble overtaking Piastri on the straight, even with DRS, and that lost him a lot of time- just enough for the Spanish matador to keep his P6. The race engineer of the Mercedes driver said on the team radio after the race:
"OK, that's P7. Good job this afternoon, pace looked good. It looked like at the end there Alonso had a couple of issues with his throttle. It seemed to fix itself on the final lap."
What Alonso has done isn't anything illegal. In fact, he has done precisely the same thing that Carlos Sainz did during the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix. Russell laughed at his engineer's comment before saying, "Yeah…"
Media asked the 26-year-old a question about Alonso's tactics after the race, and he responded with a light-hearted answer:
"Fernando, playing? That's new! That was intelligent from him and I didn't expect anything less from him."
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