Fernando Alonso’s car haunted? Aston Martin figure gives two-word response

Fernando Alonso suggested that there is something “paranormal” going on inside his Aston Martin AMR25 following the Qatar Grand Prix.

An unexplainable trip through the gravel was followed a day later by a spin in the Grand Prix that had Alonso declaring that the “spirits” were at work. Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack was moving on to the “next question”.

Fernando Alonso suggests Aston Martin AMR25 haunted

Aston Martin is fighting for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, and Alonso boosted their chances with a P7 in Qatar. That result came even with a spin at Turn 10.

As for how that spin came about, Alonso pointed to the paranormal.

“I was taking it easy, the truth is that I wasn’t pushing 100 per cent, but this car has disconnections, I don’t know what to call them, a bit paranormal, there’s a spirit inside the car,” he is widely reported as having said post-race.

“Yesterday, I suddenly lost the front end for three or four corners. In one of them, I suddenly went off onto the gravel, turning the steering wheel to the max. It was as if I had no front wheels…

“And today it was the rear wheels, suddenly a lash, so we’re hypersensitive to the wind, hypersensitive to one or two degrees of temperature, we’re always on a knife edge and today I made that mistake, but fortunately I was very lucky that there was no gravel, that there was nothing and that I didn’t have a train of cars behind me. There were only two at the time.”

Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer, was asked about Alonso’s haunted car claim.

“Next question,” was his response to PlanetF1.com and other media outlets, on that one.

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Alonso’s ghostly spin was overshadowed in Qatar by the major developments in the title race.

McLaren’s strategy gamble backfired, and it allowed Max Verstappen to win the Grand Prix, meaning he goes into the Abu Dhabi season finale very much a title contender as his gap to Lando Norris in top spot is only 12 points.

McLaren followed their own path by not pitting Norris nor Oscar Piastri when the Safety Car came out on Lap 7, and this is a topic which Krack did have more to say on.

Asked if he was surprised that McLaren did not pit, he replied: “Yes, very surprising.

“Because you do all that work. You do all the prep work, and there is these edge cases in terms of Safety Car, in terms of like race distance and maximum laps, and the fact that everybody came in except two cars shows you that it was probably a mistake.

“I have not reviewed their comms. It was a point we discussed in length this morning, the Safety Car of Lap 7. Because it is a brave call. You give up all your margin basically that you have, because you have 50 laps to go with two sets of tyres.

“It is something we discussed in length, and we said, ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do,’ because you have no time to discuss, you know, in such situations. And I think I was expecting everybody to come in, and I was surprised that they didn’t.”

Asked to elaborate on the simulation process which the team goes through for instances like that Safety Car timed exactly on Lap 7, Krack added: “This is our key business. The race is the only place where you can score. So you need to be prepared as much as you can.

“There’s an element of life decisions that you can take, but you cannot just go by feeling, so you try to replay the race and think, how can it pan out? What can happen? And the Safety Car scenarios is one of these scenarios.

“They can be early. They can be mid. They can be late. There is the statistics, there is history, and then there is a long list of things that you go through.

“Not every track is the same. Virtual Safety Car is different to Safety Car. Then you have the strategic impact about which tyres to put, and the complexity here with the lap limit, it is clear that if you stop on Lap 7, you have only one stop to do, and there’s a very long pit lane here.

“But on the other hand, we have seen in the Sprint that the tyres were having a hard time on the 19 laps.

“So you try to juggle all these things, the tyres, the Safety Car, the car, the competition, your own pace and degradation, because not everybody is the same. And then, you elaborate a picture, and then you just have to try and execute. Planning.”

Norris, Verstappen and Piastri all head to Abu Dhabi looking to secure the Drivers’ title. 16 points covers the trio.

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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