With only a handful of laps remaining in the race, the Spaniard caught up with Hamilton in the battle for 3rd place and tried to overtake him a number of times, before finally clipping the rear side of the McLaren driver's car and damaging his front wing.
At the end of the race, Hamilton was handed a 20-second penalty for doing more than one move to defend his position on Sepang's main straight, while Alonso received the exact same penalty for careless driving and touching Hamilton's car.
“At 300kmh he did some very aggressive moves with the steering wheel,” argued Alonso after the race, when interviewed by the AS newspaper.
As far as the incident between the two goes, the Ferrari-an played down its significance, despite the fact that it cost him a potential podium finish.
“It was a normal racing incident,” he said when referring to his contact with Ham. “It is one of those things. You try and race and we touched each other. (...) We are racing drivers, I would do the same thing tomorrow, while others make the decisions.”
“The stewards called us to see our opinions and the decision is this. We are not the ones that decide, or have anything to say about the decision. We try to race, to try to enjoy the race in the cockpit and hopefully next time we finish both with no problems.”
Asked about the incident, Hamilton avoided to make any comments regarding Alonso's move, although he did show his frustration over the fact that the 20-second penalty did not change anything in the Spaniard's overall classification. While Alonso kept his 6th place finish, Hamilton was demoted to 8th place.
“As for Fernando, he hit me, he got a 20-second penalty, but it didn't really do anything to him. It doesn't exactly work out as a penalty, but again, that's racing,” he said.
Google News