Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

2016 sabbatical not the plan - Alonso

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Fernando Alonso says it is not his intention to take a sabbatical in 2016, following comments from Ron Dennis.

The McLaren boss suggested Alonso could sit out next season if the new car was still not competitive, insisting he would still race for three years with the team either way.

"He will definitely finish his career at McLaren," Dennis said on Saturday in Abu Dhabi. "I have an open mind to anything, and some of the ideas have involved those sorts of considerations, sabbatical years, etc. But at this moment of time, I would say that we believe we know where we will be.

"I think we navigated a difficult weekend [in Japan] in respect of our drivers. I took quite a high level of flack out of that weekend and it was a challenge to navigate out of it, but nevertheless, here we are.

"We have a great number of driver options and two of the best drivers in the world in our cars. When we have to take the decision we will take it together, at this moment of time our drivers for next year are Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button."

Alonso says it is not his intention to take a year off, suggesting the first test would be too early to judge how competitive the car will be. Asked if he could absolutely rule out taking a sabbatical, Alonso replied: "I think you can never say 100% anything.

"I cannot say that tomorrow I will not have dinner, because I don’t know if I will be hungry or not. My intention is to race and I think I will race. We will see how it goes next year and it is not in my plans not to race. As I said in the TV compound, I was the first to be surprised about Ron’s comments and I know that it’s up to me now to answer and interpret and get what he meant with those comments, but I think it is much better to ask him tomorrow when he is here, because I am the first to be surprised.

"Just to add to how strange the comment is, if I were to take a sabbatical I would have taken this year! I kept racing, kept fighting and kept pushing the car uphill to go to the pit lane, so that’s how it was."

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AS IT HAPPENED: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Qualifying

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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.