Felipe Massa: "Alonso has good friends among the stewards"

Felipe Massa says that he thinks Fernando Alonso's friendship with the stewards at the US Grand Prix helped him escape there collision without any punishment.

In the final stages of the race, Alonso overtook Massa in a barging move down the inside. Massa consequently received a puncture with hampered any sort of come-back from the Brazilian veteran.

"My only thought is that he had good friends there [among the stewards]," he said.

"If you look from the top it looks amazing what he did. If you look from his inside camera he was far away. He was not close enough to try to overtake. He didn’t brake."

"When he braked he locked the wheels and just hit me. If I was not there he was never going to go through the corner. Never. Which definitely the stewards need to evaluate, need to have the decision. Sometimes it is a little bit inconsistent, sometimes not. Maybe some times it is correct or not."

Massa went even further to point out that Alonso's eventual overtake on Carlos Sainz involved him going off-track, and Massa doesn't understand how he wasn't penalised for either incident. "He had another one [with Sainz] where he was outside braking, he braked too late. He went off the track and everybody is happy."

"So at least one of these two incidents he was supposed to get a penalty, like many other drivers have by doing that."