Fernando Alonso has opened up on the back pain, emotions and mystery brake problems that he battled to drag his Aston Martin to the finish in the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The Spaniard had been struggling throughout last weekend with the new bumpy Interlagos surface, but matters reached a peak in the race as the repeated impacts were felt in his spine.
But despite the pain, a far from competitive car that had been repaired after his qualifying crash, plus brake issues that kept trying to pitch him off the track, he said there was no way he was going to simply give up.
During the race, Alonso came on the team radio to tell his team why he did not want to retire the car.
“I will finish the race for the mechanics,” he said. “They did a very good job today. But my back is hurting, man. This bouncing is not normal.”
After being consoled and hugged by a mechanic as he gingerly got out of his car after the race, Alonso explained that his situation had been getting worse and worse – but at no point was he ready to retire.
“There was a lot of bouncing, a lot of porpoising in the second half of the race,” he said. “I don't know why, but it was a tough race. We were out of the points.
“I think in any other circumstances, probably I would have stopped. But the mechanics did an incredible job before the race to put the car ready on the grid, so I had to finish it for them.”
Alonso said he had been aware before of the challenges his back would face in the race and that was on top of the other issue of an intestinal infection that had prompted a trip back to Europe after Mexico and his late arrival in Brazil.
“It was painful, for sure. The lead-up to this race, it was a lot of preparation from my side, a lot of checks, a lot of work, a lot of physio and doctors in order to come here in Brazil,” he said.
“So it was a lot of effort from everybody: the same effort as the mechanics put in today.
“It was not comfortable in the car. But there are people worse than me, also in Valencia, we have these terrible images and people struggling. So I had to struggle a couple of laps for everybody.”
Brake issue
As well as battling the pain barrier, Alonso also had to overcome huge challenges in staying on track in the race – with his Aston Martin car suffering from brake problems.
In what appears to have been a repeat phenomenon to what pitched Lance Stroll off on the formation lap, Alonso said the rears kept locking after the restarts.
“I think Lance had the brake problem in the formation lap, and I had the brake issue after all the restarts, where all the brake balance goes completely rearwards,” he said. “It was like braking with a hand brake.
“So all in all it was a nightmare out there. We need to get better for the next three.”
Stroll, who compounded his formation lap spin into the barrier at Turn 4 by getting beached in a gravel trap that he tried to get across at low speed, said there was no immediate explanation for the brake issue.
“Yeah strange,” he said. “As soon as I touched the brakes, I just had a huge rear lock, and then I was a passenger from there.
“I never felt that in the car [before]. So maybe there was a brake failure problem. We have to look into it.”
The brake issue across both cars could be a consequence of the team’s brake mapping for wet restarts, aimed at warming the rear tyres by shifting the balance backwards, not resetting.
