Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Concussed Alonso to stay in hospital overnight

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Fernando Alonso will stay in hospital overnight having been concussed in a testing accident at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Having hit the wall on the inside of the circuit between turns 3 and 4, Alonso was taken to the circuit’s medical centre before being airlifted to hospital for a CT scan which showed he was “uninjured”. However, racing director Eric Boullier says Alonso did suffer a concussion in the impact and will be kept in hospital overnight asa result.

“Fernando’s accident was just one of those things that happens in testing,” Boullier said. “Fortunately, he’s fine, but was concussed during the accident, which therefore required an overnight stay in hospital as a precaution. That’s normal practice after a concussion. Inevitably, some media reports have sought to exaggerate the severity of the incident – it was just a normal testing accident.

“While the car wasn’t particularly badly damaged, it was enough of an impact to warrant quite a lengthy check of the gearbox and power unit systems. Given the time needed to carry out such an analysis, we decided to bring the curtain down on our test a few hours earlier than anticipated.

“It’s been a tough week for the whole team, but we’ll be back, and pushing harder than ever, in Barcelona next week.”

Full times and the final day as it happened

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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.