Fernando Alonso has opened up on the scary moment the steering wheel of his Aston Martin came off while he was driving. The worrying incident happened during practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Alonso had reported over the radio that he was experiencing a problem with his steering wheel during the session. “Change the steering wheel. There’s a problem with the steering wheel, it’s switching off,” he informed his race engineer, clearly concerned that there was a something not right with his controls.
Sky Sports TV footage showed that the screen on his steering wheel kept going black, indicating that its power connection was being interrupted. But the significance of that was lost somewhat when, far more problematically, the wheel came completely away from the car.
The camera mounted above the cockpit showed how Alonso reacted quickly to put it back in place and regain steering control of the car. He went off track as a result but, fortunately, there was a generous run-off area for him to drive into which meant he didn’t crash.
He returned to the pits so the Aston Martin mechanics could take a close look at the issue. And, after a few minutes of examination, a spokesperson for the team confirmed parts of the steering system were being replaced.
Speaking about what happened, though, the Spaniard appeared rather calm. He said: “Yeah, the car was not working and I could not shift gears at one point. I had the dash off, so I could not communicate with the team either.
“And yeah, in the last corner, the wheel was off, so yeah, we realised that maybe the steering column or the wheel or something had a problem. The mechanics quickly changed the parts and everything was fine. So yeah, a moment there, but yeah, thanks to everyone in the garage to fix it quite fast.”
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Not that Aston Martin have a great deal for them to feel better about this weekend. Their one-lap pace in particular looked poor in practice and Alonso admitted: “It’s going to be a tough weekend.
“Unfortunately, we seem not to have the pace. Before coming here, the characteristics of Bahrain was a little bit of a concern for us, for our package, and, yeah, probably we confirm it today that we are not competitive.
“So yeah, it’s going to be a tough weekend, but we will try to learn. We try to push, and we are not giving up. The race is long on Sunday.”
That sentiment was echoed by team-mate Lance Stroll who said: “I think we have some work to do. We seemed a bit on the back foot, so we’ll see what we can come up with. It’s not really our kind of track. It’s not an easy weekend for us with the nature of the circuit. I think we’re pretty far back this weekend.”
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