More ‘spin’ off the track for Alonso

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“Stop whining, start winning”. “Strain getting to suffering Alonso”. Just two of the rather sensational headlines in this morning’s papers.

The cause? A few recent comments from Fernando Alonso which people have taken out of context to varying degrees.

After losing the Chinese Grand Prix through a combination of team and driver errors, Alonso recently made some public remarks about the mistakes, the behaviour of his team mate Giancarlo Fisichella during the race, and how he had felt “alone” on two occasions this season when his car struggled for pace and his team were unable to help him.

What surprised me most in the varying stories was a quote attributed to Giancarlo Fisichella in the Daily Mail, which I could find no mention of in any other reports: “Don’t blame me if you lose your title,” they claim Fisichella said.

(Without wishing to get too far into grammatical correctness, it is interesting that the Mail’s story never uses double quote marks for its quotes, only single quotes throughout, which rather fudges the distinction between direct quotes and paraphrasing.)

Apart from the Mail’s questionable quote it’s difficult to pinpoint any ‘smoking gun’ in any newspapers running this ‘story’ to support these accusations.

What I find most disappointing about this is that Formula One drivers are notoriously bad for giving interesting quotes in interview. You only have to watch one of Michael Schumacher’s press conferences (or read the The Times’s recent interview with Jenson Button, below) to see what I mean.

But Alonso has always been one of the more forthright with his opinions – especially so followinghis poor treatment at the hands of the stewards in Monza this year. I’d hate to think that by distorting his words on this occasion, the press might struggle to get at his real thoughts in the future. But that may well prove to be the case:

The press try to make whatever you say bigger to have more repercussions. I’m used to this – 99% of the things that you read in the press are misunderstandings.

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One comment on “More ‘spin’ off the track for Alonso”

  1. I guess the best quote was said by Fisichella yesterday. He said “It is closed for me…” pause, and a smile: “In fact, it was never open!”

    This whole incident was like a licence to abuse for Spaniard’s (lets say) non-supportors. He was being called everything from a crybaby to a wuss. I guess if this had happened with say one of the Hondas or Red Bulls nobody would have even cared about the comment.

    There will always be ppl who will make things sound the way they want it to sound

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