Why Did Fernando Alonso’s FP2 in Japan Come to an End Prematurely?

Fernando Alonso’s start to the 2025 season continues to go from bad to worse. After consecutive DNFs in Australia and China, the Spaniard suffered another setback in Japan, with an incident that ended his session prematurely.

Alonso lost control of his car into turn eight and beached the car into the gravel.

The two-time world champion tried to correct his mistake and did his best to get the AMR25 back on track. Unfortunately, he had gone in too deep and was unable to resume his session. As a result, FP2 was red-flagged for the second time—the first coming when Jack Doohan suffered his horrific crash.

“I’m stuck in turn eight. All good,” Alonso said on the radio, giving his race engineer Andrew Vizard an update. “Bit of bouncing on something strange on the entry“.

Thankfully, unlike Doohan’s crash—which will require Alpine to work extensively on the car to have it ready for qualifying—Alonso’s team shouldn’t have the same concerns. The Oviedo-born driver simply couldn’t get out of the gravel, which is a common problem drivers in F1 face.

Doohan’s Alpine, meanwhile, was heavily damaged. He hit the barriers at Turn 1 at a speed of 300 km/h (186 mph), which also raised concerns about a potential injury.

The Aussie insisted he was okay, but he was seen holding his back as the medical team escorted him back to the paddock, and his right arm also appeared to be injured.

As for the FP2 session, it was the McLaren drivers who topped the timesheets once again. Oscar Piastri was half a tenth quicker than teammate Lando Norris, while Isack Hadjar set the third-fastest time in his Racing Bulls.

With limited running in FP2 due to the two red flags, drivers and teams will be hoping to get valuable laps in during FP3 to prepare for qualifying and the main race on Sunday.