After an intense two laps of wheel-to-wheel action, Alonso passed his Toro Rosso rival at Turn 12 after having used DRS to get ahead on the previous straight.

Alonso, however, left his braking too late and had to go off track.

When he rejoined, the McLaren driver managed to keep Sainz behind.

The Toro Rosso driver saw nothing wrong with the move, and admitted he had enjoyed the fight.

"We play with it. We play knowing you can go a bit wide," said Sainz, who finished the race in sixth. "I think it was a fair fight out there. I enjoyed it a lot.

"His first comment after seeing me after the race was 'you have a parachute on the straight. You are so slow. It was so easy to get you on that back straight'. And I said 'yeah I know, I know. Don't tell me that now'.

"That was his first comment. I responded with an insult, like 'you motherf*****, you got me, but you shouldn't have'. Laughing, just laughing.

"Having a laugh, because we actually did have a lot of fun. And I'm sure for him to get a P5 with that McLaren, he can also be very pleased. We're both happy drivers.

"I'm extremely happy the battle was for P5 and not P10, and extremely happy that we kept it clean and nice."

Williams driver Felipe Massa was also embroiled in the battle, the Brazilian splitting the Spaniards until Alonso overtook him with a move that included contact and an investigation.

Sainz felt that if Massa had not been passed by Alonso, he would have been able to keep the Brazilian behind to secure fifth.

"I was interested in keeping Massa behind, because even if he had a Mercedes engine, I had a bigger advantage on him in Sector 1 than Alonso," he added.

"I knew that Fernando was not going to be able to pass a Williams, because with the top speed of the Williams with DRS open he doesn't have any advantage.

"I knew that he was going to try something, it would be something crazy like happened, and maybe they'd make a collision and I'd be safe.

"Everything happened until two laps to the end exactly as I planned, it was just those two laps from the end I hit the cliff of the tyre and had nothing."