Alonso out in Hungary with injury – Fernando Alonso has been discussing how Formula One may improve the visibility for the drivers in wet conditions having arrived in Budapest, yet a back injury is set to keep him out of the car. The former F2 champion Aston Martin reserve drive Felipe Drugovitch will stand in for the Spaniard at the Hungaroring.
For now the Aston Martin team have confirmed Fernando will miss FP1 on Friday afternoon, yet a team insider suggested to TJ13 that the Spaniard’s chances of making the second practice are small at present.
Alonso is suffering from extremely painful back spasms, but the standard medical treatment to correct this problem would subdue his senses and make it dangerous to climb behind the wheel of an F1 car. It could be Fernando is forced to miss the entire track sessions on Friday, but given Aston Martin’s lack of competitiveness, the team have discussed allowing Drugovitch to run for the entire weekend, given Fernando will be compromised if he just has a single hour of practice on Saturday before the qualifying session.
Alonso’s experience in wet weather
With more than twenty yers experience of racing F1 cars in different eras, with different tyres and aero packages, Alonso believes F1 could mitigate the visibility issues suffered in Spa Francorchamps last weekend.
At the 2025 Belgium Grand Prix, the drivers were sent out as scheduled on the formation lap, but behind the safety car. Race control received feedback from several of the competitors during the lap and the decision was made to red flag the start due to poor visibility.
At the time it was not raining, although a number of the drivers complained about poor visibility. Max Verstappen’s reaction to the red flag was one of annoyance. When asked when he believed the race should have begun, he replied: “Three o’clock, straight away. It was not even raining. Between turn one and five there was quite a bit of water but if you do two or three laps behind the safety car, then it would have been a lot more clear, and the rest of the track was ready to go.”
The eventual start under the safety car began some 80 minutes later which was then followed by a rolling start, used by race control when they fear the conditions are too dangerous. Lewis Hamilton revealed his frustration at the inordinate delay, explaining “I kept shouting, ‘It’s ready to go, it’s ready to go!’ And they kept going round and round and round. So I think they were probably overreacting from the last race where we asked them not to restart the race too early because visibility was bad. And I think this weekend they just went a bit too much the other way, because we didn’t need a rolling start.”
Modern asphalt to blame
F1’s elder statesman Fernando Alonso has experienced driving in the wet across a number of eras in Formula One. The Spaniard believes there are solutions to the problems facing the current safety conscious FIA officials. Fernando believes it is the modern surfaces which are to blame for the incremental spray being kicked up.
Speaking to assembled media in Budapest, the Aston Martin driver suggested that whilst tyres were indeed a factor in the problem, it is the newer layers of asphalt which are problematic.
“I think the tyres, the wide tyres definitely made visibility worse, and probably some of the asphalt in the circuits, they are a little bit different than what they’ve been in the past.” Alonso recalls regularly racing in Sepang at the Malaysian Grand Prix “with a lot of water and it was always okay.
“And now this new generation of asphalt, which is very black and very grippy in dry conditions, is like a mirror in wet conditions. And yeah, visibility is not nice. But I don’t know what we can do there or what the tyres can do in a very rough tarmac.”
European highways have the solution
Fernando believes a number of highways in Europe now have surfaces where no matter how hard the rain, there is no spray thrown up into the air. The Spaniard did concede that these surfaces if used for F1 races, would most likely be highly abrasive and cause significant more tyre degradation to the dry weather tyres.
“So if we implement that tarmac in all the circuits as a normal rule, we will have zero spray. Then it will be a huge degradation, probably, in dry conditions – I don’t know. But then we can work from that theme and have a starting point. But I’m just a driver,” he concluded.
Sainz calls on F1 to “innovate”
The other Spaniard on the grid, Carlos Sainz, also discussed the fact that the multi-billion dollar sport of F1 should be able to find solutions for such problems. “I always thought Formula 1 should almost like, if possible, innovate and try something different,” the Williams driver told assembled media. “I think there are certain kind of tarmacs that if you would put them on a straight line there would be no spray, and they exist, but circuits don’t have them. Most circuits don’t have it.”
Sainz also revealed that after dubious conditions and visibility in Silverstone, where Isack Hadjar ran into the back of Kimi Antonelli, the FIA had warned the drivers in Belgium they wold take a more conservative approach. The Williams driver also suggested the FIA could communicate their intentions better with the teams and the paying public, may of whom could not understand why racing did not get underway as soon as the rain stopped.
Reasons and excuses aside, Sainz did confirm: “It’s for everyone maybe to have a bit more awareness but I do think we could have obviously raced a bit earlier than what we did. Going a bit earlier after the red flag and the Safety Car could have lasted a bit less long.”
Wolff blunder with Antonelli exposed
HUGE blunder from Toto Wolff – When Toto Wolff became Mercedes team principal in 2014 he received little or no education in how it would feel to be the boss of a team struggling to build a winning Formula One car.
Mercedes dominated the sport for eight seasons, winning seven drivers’ championships and eight constructor titles. Yet early in his career as the boss of an F1 team, Wolff issued out on the opportunity to sign Max Verstappen, something he regrets to this day.
With Hamilton and Rosberg competing fiercely for there drivers crown each season, there appeared to be no room at the Mercedes inn for the youngest ever F1 driver. So when the German brand’s young driver programme delivered a young Italian driver, labelled by the sport’s media as the ‘next Max’, Wolff decided this time he would not miss out… READ MORE
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