Fernando Alonso lashed out at his McLaren race engineer for their slow car back during the 2018 Hungarian GP.
Alonso’s first season with McLaren was in 2007 when he was paired up with a rookie Lewis Hamilton as his teammate. It was a turbulent season because of off-track drama, even though the Spaniard finished level on points with Hamilton.
He left the Surrey-based outfit the next year but returned in 2015. Upon his return, however, McLaren were not the winning them they once were. The main problems they faced were engine-related, which frustrated Alonso a lot. In every single Grand Prix, fans could hear the 2-time World Champion complain to his team about how slow the car was out on track.
Fernando Alonso feels his McLaren team got ‘overexcited’ on the radio when it was telling him he could end up racing the cars running fifth or sixth at the time in #FrenchGP https://t.co/zzp70wyqu3
— Autosport (@autosport) June 24, 2018
One such incident came at the Hungaroring in 2018, which was his last season in F1 before his sabbatical. Conditions were extremely wet out on track that afternoon and the team wanted to know if Alonso wanted to make his final Q2 runs using intermediate tires or full wets.
Unfortunately for Alonso’s race engineer, he wasn’t in a great mood.
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Fernando Alonso asked race engineer to put ‘whatever tire he wants’
Alonso was on his in-lap when his race engineer asked him what tire he wanted to use. The former Ferrari driver meanwhile, wanted to get out of his car and assess what was going wrong before making another run.
The McLaren crew did not want that. This is because Alonso would get only one more timed lap if they spent time on the car. The Oviedo-born driver, however, was having none of it. He was adamant that no matter what tire he used, he wouldn’t go past P11.
When his race engineer asked him which tire he wanted to use, Alonso replied by saying, “I don’t know mate. Put whatever tire you want. The last sector is impossible. Even if you put a rocket ship, we will be eleventh!”
Alonso took his woeful 2018 season as a reason to step away from F1 for the time-being. He traveled to the US to take part in the Indy 500, and also competed in and won the 24 hours of Le Mans. In 2021, he returned to F1 with Alpine (formerly known as Renault), the team with whom he won his two World Titles.
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