Fernando Alonso has been accused of sour grapes after his less than enthusiastic remarks regarding team mate Nelsinho Piquet's performance in the Hockenheim GP. He points out, quite correctly, that Piquet's second place owed far more to luck in pitting just before the safety car period than to any great skill in his driving. The problem for F1 fans has been that Alonso appears not to have congratulated Nelsinho, surely the least that might be expected of a team mate, although there are reports that he sent an SMS message.
Nelson Piquet Jr
Whilst it is true that Piquet's pit stop could not have been better timed, it is also a fact that he drove well enough to keep Massa behind him in the closing stages. That was worrying enough for Ferrari for the team to have "summit meetings" afterwards and it clearly hurt their pride to be beaten by Renault; Piquet deserves credit for that, at least.
So I agree that Alonso is showing his usual petulance at being beaten but that is understandable, even so. Flavio Briatore was reported to be quite critical of the Spaniard's performance after the race and I think that was very unfair. Consider what Alonso achieved that weekend.
He qualified the Renault ahead of both BMWs, Red Bulls and one Ferrari, fifth spot being well above what the car should have been capable of. The bare statistics may state that he then dropped down the order to finish in eleventh but that is only half of the story. In the race Alonso was very competitive and made several passing attempts on the drivers around him; as luck would have it, every attempt was fouled up by one thing or another and resulted in him being passed himself. The point is that he was trying, however, and was quick enough to compete with the Toyotas and BMWs.
That is the thing about Alonso and the reason why Honda have to be interested in him: he is both talented and a racer, no matter how miserable he can be after losing. He has looked ragged this season but that is only because he is having to drive at the very limit to stay with the competition. Renault is getting its money's worth from him.
As for Nelsinho, I doubt he will be too concerned by Alonso's bad grace. He knows how much his podium position owed to circumstance and will not let it go to his head. After his apparently arrogant statements last year, he has had to learn humility in double quick time. That will help enormously in his development as a person and might well assist in turning him into a strong F1 driver too.
I notice, too, that doubts are now being expressed about Alonso's ability to set up the car; there was even mention that he borrowed aspects of Piquet's settings for the race in Hockenheim. That surely illustrates the fickleness of the media, so certain were they that Hamilton benefited from Alonso's settings last year; yet now Lewis is the class of the field without any assistance from Fernando. As Steven Roy often points out, each driver has his own style and will prefer some aspects of handling over others - seeing a team mate's settings might occasionally give a clue as to why they are quicker at some point in the circuit but only a fool would transfer the whole thing to his own car.