Alonso And McLaren Can't Get Their Stories Straight Following "Gusty Winds" Crash

Fernando Alonso has spoken for the first time about the testing accident that forced him to miss the Australian Grand Prix. Answering questions in the Malaysian Grand Prix FIA driver press conference on Thursday, he shared a version of events that went against what McLaren had originally said.

He suffered a concussion after crashing at Turn 3 on the final day of the second F1 test, and followed advice from doctors to sit out the 2015 season opener in Melbourne. McLaren said originally that the accident was caused by “unpredictably strong winds” and ruled out a fault with the car, before recently adding that Alonso reported “heavy steering”.

Alonso shared his explanation of what happened, rubbishing several rumours - such as one that claimed he thought it was 1995 when he woke up. He also said that he lost consciousness on his way to hospital, not during the crash.

He said:

“Everything was more or less as a normal concussion. So, I had this concussion, went to the hospital. I went to the hospital in good conditions. There is a time that I don’t remember from two o’clock to six o’clock or something like that, but everything again was normal due to the medication that they give you to go into the helicopter and to do some tests in the hospital.

“I didn’t wake up in ’95, I didn’t wake up speaking in Italian or all these things that probably they were out there. I remember the accident and I remember everything that following day. Obviously with the team we have been very close working on that and with the FIA, they were very helpful all the times, and we were in close contact, all three parts constantly and yeah, there is not in the data anything clear that we can spot and we can say it was that, the reason.”

He added:

“Definitely we had a steering problem in the middle of turn three. It locked into the right and I approached the wall I braked in the last moment, I downshift from fifth to third, and yeah, unfortunately on the data we are still missing some parts.

“Also the acquisition of data on that particular part of the car is not at the top so there are some new sensors here at this race and there are some changes we do on the steering rack and other parts and yeah that was the main thing. The last week at the factory was more a work on the simulator and trying to explain to me these new sensors and these new parts that will go on this race.”

When asked about McLaren’s claim of gusty winds causing the crash, he replied:

“No, no, definitely not. I don’t know if you see the video but even a hurricane will not move the car at that speed.

Alonso passed final FIA assessments and will race for McLaren this weekend in Malaysia.