Fernando Alonso has "fallen out" with one of his direct Formula 1 rivals this season with "not a lot of love lost between them now".
The Spaniard is enjoying a new lease of life in F1, at the age of 41. Despite being the oldest racer on the grid, he is making the most of a much-improved Aston Martin car to show that he can still mix it with the best of them.
He has begun the new season with three consecutive podiums. The first was relatively straightforward, showing the pace he had in Bahrain to move past the Mercedes and Ferrari cars – only the Red Bulls were beyond his reach.
But the last two have come with a little help from the FIA stewards. He was reinstated to third place in Jeddah after initially being stripped of it for failing to serve a time penalty properly during the race, only to have that decision overturned when Aston Martin challenged it.
And, at the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, Alonso looked for a moment as though he would be denied third place after being spun by Carlos Sainz in a late restart. The race was red flagged again with several other incidents occurring at the same time and, luckily for the Spaniard, he did not lose any positions as a result.
It was when analysing that situation that veteran F1 journalist Peter Windsor claimed Alonso has had a personal falling-out with Sainz. Speaking on his YouTube channel, he said: "Carlos goes into Turn 1 alongside Fernando Alonso, who's ahead of him but not necessarily on the racing line [or] so far ahead that he can just use whatever bit of road he requires.
"He still needs Carlos Sainz to see him there and to back away and to give him the corner. My point has been, ever since the Alex Albon/ Lewis Hamilton penalty in Austria, that this rule is insanely stupid. If you're on the outside of any corner, you are tempting fate. You're totally in the hands of the cars inside you.
"If they decide to use all the road, and you have to take avoiding action, you have to take avoiding action and run into the boonies. You can't expect the driver on the inside of any corner to give way to you just because you're ahead but you're on the outside. The guy on the inside owns the corner – that is the absolute golden rule of motor racing.
"But they've come up with this sporting code where, now, if the car is ahead and he's on the outside, you have to give way to him. I think that's completely wrong and I've been saying that for five years. That's why I say it was Charles Leclerc's fault [on the first lap], he shouldn't have put the Ferrari in that place of danger.
"So there's Carlos Sainz on the inside [and] Fernando Alonso is now effectively doing what Charles Leclerc was doing and, inevitably, Carlos runs into him. I'm not saying there's anything malicious there at all.
"But, of course, we have to add that, as I understand it, Carlos and Fernando have fallen out recently and there's not a lot of love lost between them now – but that's not relevant as I'm sure that wasn't going through the minds of either of them. They were just focused on doing what they were doing."
Regardless of any personal grievance he may hold towards Sainz, Alonso said after the race that the five-second time penalty given to the Ferrari racer for causing his spin was "harsh". Because the Grand Prix finished behind the safety car, he dropped from fourth place to 12th as a result and the Italian team went home empty-handed.
