Fernando Alonso believes Formula 1’s television coverage uses his team radio out of context, taking particular issue with its broadcast of his messages to Aston Martin during the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Spaniard complained Aston Martin had “thrown me to the lions” with an early first pit stop that left him unable to hold off the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers, while he later told his engineer to come up with a different strategy as he was losing ground to Esteban Ocon on the straights. However, Alonso disputed that he was angry with his team, instead criticizing the broadcasting of his messages.
“Not angry — it’s the same, the classic thing, the classic FOM radio,” Alonso said. “Completely out of context, in a moment that I’m not sure exactly what other drivers can say when they are behind a car that is slower and on the straight they are pulling away even when you open the DRS.
“Maybe the other drivers say ‘I’m OK, I’m happy to be behind’ but I prefer to be motivated to overtake them on track. I was slower even with DRS open. I called for a different strategy, we stopped, we beat them — that’s the way we do it. We beat everyone on track even if the radio is the highlight.”
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The message after his first pit stop was one of the first times Alonso’s been publicly critical of Aston Martin since joining the team but he believes it was an error made because it didn’t react to how strong its race pace was quickly enough.
“I was upset because I think the first stop was too early. I think we were fast, faster than what we thought in terms of pace, I was behind the Ferraris, in front of (Lewis) Hamilton, with not too much pressure. Lap 12 we stopped, I think to cover (Yuki) Tsunoda, which was a little bit of a surprise there.
“After that stop, the race was very long from that moment onwards, and maybe that was a mistake, but easy to say now. I think arguably the final result will be P8 after the top teams — it didn’t change our race much.
“I didn’t argue, I knew that we stopped too early, and it’s not a problem. Sometimes we benefit, sometimes there is a thing that we can learn. As I said the final result doesn’t change probably.
“I think we had two hard tires and Ferrari only one, so we tried to anticipate the first stop to force them to go early. I understand the strategy, there’s nothing wrong with it, (but) when you have a very slow car in the straight you are in parts of the race where you lose momentum. It happened but I’m fine.”
Although contradicting himself slightly, Alonso said the competitiveness of the car on Sunday was unexpected as he felt he could have held on to a top-six result after another impressive start moved him forwards at Suzuka.
“I think the tires helped — off the line the soft tire gives you a bit extra. A little bit of chaos in Turn 2 with Checo (Perez) and Hamilton, capitalized on those moves, that’s why when we stopped in that privileged position of P6 it felt a little bit strange; but the positive is that the pace of the car was surprisingly good.
“I didn’t expect to be as fast as Ferrari and Mercedes, to be honest. With a more optimized strategy we could have maybe finished P6, P7, and it didn’t look that way after qualifying, so definitely Sunday was very strong for us and we need to understand why.”