Fernando Alonso has rubbished suggestions that he deliberately blocked Michael Schumacher during qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, after the German driver confronted the Spaniard in parc ferme after the session was over.
Schumacher qualified 7th at the Albert Park circuit, less than a tenth of a second behind his team mate Nico Rosberg, after seeming to have the upper hand on his young team mate throughout practice.
And after the session was over, Schumacher was seen to be in conversation with Alonso while the Spaniard was still in his car, with the German suggesting afterwards that he simply wanted to see whether Alonso had been warned that he was on a flying lap.
“Basically on my last try I was slowed down by him,” Schumacher muttered to SpeedTV, “I asked him whether the team told him, and he said no. In a way it’s difficult because he’d been on his in-lap and worrying for other things than maybe to watch the mirrors.
“But saying that we had this chat yesterday in the driver’s briefing that this should be taken care about. And actually he was one of the main guys about it. So I just wanted to know whether the team had told him or not."
He added that he had mentioned the incident to FIA man Charlie Whiting, saying that: “I had a conversation with Charlie about this, because I need to now as well what is reference, what is the guidelines here, because the rules have changed a little bit to what they used to be, so I need to know what is it, what you’d be OK and what not.”
Alonso, though, affirmed to spox.com in Germany that the suggestion he had deliberately tried to block the seven-time champion was "nonsense".
"He thought I had held him up intentionally on his fast lap. But that's nonsense," Alonso explained, "I could not see him in the mirrors and there was no info on the radio. So I was only able to move over after he was already there."
Ironically, the pair of drivers, who famously squabbled for the world championship in Schumacher's last year in F1 in 2006, went on to collide at the first corner, with Alonso's spinning Ferrari clipping the front wing of Schumacher's Mercedes, damaging it.
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