Fernando Alonso accuses Lewis Hamilton of driving 'like a bull' as...

Lewis Hamilton drove like a bull and only escaped punishment because he isn’t Spanish, according his old foe Fernando Alonso.

The double world champion made the claims after being caught up in a melee on the opening corner of the Miami sprint won by Max Verstappen.

As it happened, the matter of a punishment for Hamilton’s extravagance was irrelevant in so much as he was handed a retrospective drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane, which dropped him to a dismal 16th place from an on-road eighth.

‘We’ll see what they decide,’ Alonso goaded the stewards. ‘He was a little bit out of control. I guess they won’t decide anything because he is not Spanish.

‘But he ruined the race for a few people, especially Lando Norris, who had a very fast car and he was out in that incident.’

The drama unfolded when Hamilton, who started 12th, came hurtling down the inside. He braked very late and tangled with Aston Martin’s unsuspecting Alonso, who ricocheted into team-mate Lance Stroll, who then clipped McLaren’s Norris.

Norris and Stroll retired. The safety car was deployed. ‘Hamilton arrived like a bull,’ complained Alonso over the radio. The Spaniard suffered a puncture but returned to the fray, though right at the back, having started eighth. He finished 18th and last. Hamilton was unscathed.

‘There was a gap on the inside and I went for it,’ he protested.

The stewards looked into the incident but took no further action. It was a generous adjudication, though their declared policy is to show judicial leniency at starts.

There is plenty of history between Hamilton and Alonso, dating back to their acrimonious partnership at McLaren in 2007. They weren’t on speaking terms by the end of that feud.

More recently, they crashed at Belgium in 2022. Alonso called Hamilton an ‘idiot’, saying he only knew how to drive when he was at the front