Alonso allays gearbox concerns after stoppage

©WRi2

Fernando Alonso played down any concerns over problems with his gearbox as it will be replaced overnight without penalty ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Spaniard stopped on track at the end of FP2 at the Marina Bay Circuit, telling McLaren over the radio that he had a gearbox issue. After the session, Alonso confirmed he felt something had broken but will be running a different gearbox for the rest of the race weekend, with only changes occurring after the start of FP3 incurring a penalty.

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“We had a gearbox problem but we need to open it to see exactly what happened," Alonso said. "I think something is broken inside, but that won’t affect the rest of the weekend, because that was just the Friday gearbox and we can put the one from Monza back for tomorrow and get on with it."

While the reliability is concerning for Alonso, he says McLaren also needs to improve its pace to reach its target of qualifying in the top ten on Saturday.

"We weren’t too reliable today as we had problems in both cars, but it’s just Friday and better have all the problems today. But more than the reliability we have to look for a few tenths to gain because we’re around P10, we are on the edge to get to Q3 and we want to be ahead of Force India and Williams this weekend, because that was our target before coming here.

"Our expectations are as high as they were a couple of days ago, but we hope to be fighting for P8 or P9 both in qualifying and the race. Hopefully we can be faster tomorrow."

Alongside Lewis Hamilton and Nico Hulkenberg, Alonso tested the Halo during FP1 and says he has some minor concerns as a result.

"The first impression with the Halo was that it’s quite difficult to get in and out of the car. In terms of visibility it’s obvious it reduces it but I’m sure you get used to it quickly. When the nosecones were raised visibility became a lot worse but two or three years later we were all pretty used to it.

"Once the Halo is imposed there will be an initial impact but we’ll all get used to it quickly. There’s work to be done in terms of design and accessibility has to improve, even for the mechanics to be able to tighten our seat belts."

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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.