Alonso is right to speak up, but he aimed at the wrong target

Can a two-time world champion be right about the problem and still wrong about the culprit? That is the uncomfortable question Fernando Alonso left in the Mexico City paddock this week.

After a first-lap collision with Alex Albon at the US Grand Prix, Alonso said the quality of drivers in the bottom third of the grid is "very low." On Thursday in Mexico he did not back down. As Crash.net reports, he said "we all know which ones we talk about," and as AOL reports he called it "a very low level of driving and lack of talent."

The replies came fast. Albon said "it's not nice to hear those comments" from someone he looked up to as a kid, but that he disagrees. His Williams teammate Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc and Sergio Pérez also pushed back, and Pierre Gasly offered a mix of irony and generosity, saying Alonso has to be loved for the statements he makes.

The most revealing line was Alonso's own

In the same Thursday session with reporters came a sentence that undercuts the headline. Asked whether driving standards had gotten worse, Alonso answered, "No, I think it's the same over the years." Then he explained that at the back the cars have less grip, are harder to drive, and mistakes come more often "because you don't have the environment that is under control."

That is not a talent argument. It is an argument about machinery. In our view, he diagnosed the disease correctly and then handed out blame to the patients. When a driver says the car "does not welcome you in a nice way," he is describing what a weak car does to anyone, himself included.

The rivals have a point, and it is about the cars

Sainz made the cleanest version of the counterargument, as El País reports: two years ago he was winning in Mexico, this Sunday he will probably start 17th, and he is the same driver, even a better one. Pérez said that if the cars were swapped, the results would look very similar. Leclerc said what changes is, obviously, the car they drive.

We think that framing is hard to beat. Alonso himself sits in that same part of the field, with seven points and, per El País, a car that seems to have the handbrake on. Calling the people stuck there untalented is a bit like blaming tired legs for a flat tire.

But he is right to say something

Here is where we part ways with his critics. Alonso's complaint about needless first-lap contact and front wings flying around is a legitimate sporting complaint. He also said the cost cap adds to the problem. A veteran who has spent a whole season in that part of the race has earned the right to flag it.

And the paddock's reaction is itself the story. Drivers defending each other, a 45-year-old legend left isolated, and Albon's wry hope that they do not "cross paths" in the race all show how heated things get when a car is the only thing separating a points finish from invisibility. Albon's point that pay drivers are gone is fair, too, and worth more attention than the insult.

Our verdict

Alonso should keep the megaphone and change the target. Ask the FIA and the teams why the back of the grid is so punishing, why one lap-one touch can wreck a race, and what the cost cap really does to teams that cannot afford to crash. Those are real questions, and a driver of his stature can put them on the agenda.

Pointing at unnamed drivers by implication does the opposite. It turns a structural debate into a personal feud, and the structural debate is the only one that fixes anything. If he wants to be heard, he should aim at the regulations, because the drivers he criticized are, by their own account, fighting the same car problem he is.