Adrian Newey has astonishingly revealed that Fernando Alonso believes he can only do 25 consecutive laps in this year’s Aston Martin car before getting “nerve damage in their hands.”
As for Alonso’s teammate Lance Stroll, the son of team owner Lawrence Stroll, the Canadian says he cannot complete more than 15 laps before the same issue could arise.
The shock revelation was divulged in a media session on Thursday morning in Melbourne, with team principal Newey speaking alongside Honda executive Koji Watanabe.
Newey also admitted that the team are likely to be unable to complete the season-opening grand prix on Sunday, detailing: “We are going to be heavily restricted by how many laps we can do in the race, due to the vibrations [of the car].”
Newey said: “The vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems, mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address.
“But the much more significant problem is that the vibration is transmitted ultimately into the driver’s fingers. So Fernando is of the feeling that he can’t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage to his hands.
“Lance is of the opinion that you can’t do more than 15 laps before that threshold.
“It’s something that’s unfortunately koji and I haven’t had a chance to discuss properly prior to this meeting.
“We are going to have to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration and improve the vibration at source.”
More to follow…
