Fernando Alonso has vented his frustrations over the ‘out of context’ radio messages played by FOM during the FP1 broadcast at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
After a difficult start to the season finale, the Spaniard told his team: “Worst car ever, and worst traffic preparation ever. Next time I will do the out-lap myself.” This message gained plenty of traction on social media, given Aston Martin’s troubling trajectory in 2024.
Many took this message as an indication of Alonso’s growing frustration with the Silverstone squad, questioning his decision to pen a multi-year contract extension in favour of negotiating with Mercedes earlier this year.
However, according to Alonso, the message was taken out of context. He was furious with FOM, who is responsible for collating radio communications for the broadcast, which is the same in every territory worldwide.
“It was a bad traffic,” he said, explaining his complaint. “It was a frustration building. But yeah, as usual, you know, some comments are good, some comments are bad, but FOM has this fix with me, with bad comments – but I’m happy with that. It’s their job.
“Yesterday I had some positive things [to say] as well but as I said, FOM, they have to sell that I’m the grumpy guy. They tried for many years and they will not succeed.
“I didn’t have a good time [in practice] but I think all these conversations are very private with your engineer. You are trying sometimes different things. You speak about some out-lap preparations that maybe I don’t agree with the engineers.
“They want to try anyway, it doesn’t work. So you tell them, ‘Wow, you know this – we knew it beforehand’, or something like that. But when you don’t have all that context behind and you just put the radio message, it’s just wrong. But it is the way they do it.”
While Alonso’s start to the weekend was less than ideal, Aston Martin’s fortunes improved on Saturday. Alonso qualified eighth on the grid for the Grand Prix, although team-mate Lance Stroll was unable to make it out of Q2.
