Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Alonso feels he's 'too radical' for Strategy Group

Fernando Alonso says he is "too radical" to sit on the Strategy Group and give a driver's opinion on matters within F1.

The GPDA launched a fan survey on Thursday aimed at allowing drivers to understand what fans want from the sport. Following a meeting of the Strategy Group last week, Alonso says there are signs the sport has been going in the wrong direction, but when asked if he could sit on the group he replied: "No! I’m too radical. You need some common sense there, eh?"

With a number of changes suggested following the meeting of the Strategy Group, Alonso says it shows the sport feels it needs to revert to how it was in the past.

"If the tests come back we will have similar rules to seven or eight years ago, which means the last four or five years we have been going in the wrong direction ... I think the grandstand tells us."

On the last time he felt challenged to the limit physically and mentally, Alonso replied: "I think 2005.

"In 2005 the cars were eight seconds quicker. In Malaysia this year the engineers made a calculation that the winner this year compared to the winner in 2006 was six laps slower – so he would have been lapped six times. When you are six or seven minutes in a race, or eight seconds per lap quicker than this year’s car that is very demanding physically and mentally and everything was pushed to the limit. This was maybe ten years ago."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.