Fernando Alonso retired from the Canadian Formula 1 GP after suffering severe back pain, and Aston Martin believes it has identified a possible cause for the problem. According to Mike Krack, the team’s track operations director, the discomfort may be related to the seat position in the AMR26.
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The Spaniard left the race in Montreal after it became clear that the expected rain would not arrive at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. With no real chance of a competitive result, Alonso preferred not to continue in the race and avoid worsening the physical problem.
According to Krack, the two-time F1 champion had been dealing with discomfort for some time, although the situation had never reached a critical level before. The director explained that the pain seems to be linked to a ‘pressure point’, which gradually worsened during track activities.
“He had been uncomfortable for some time, never to the point of being impossible to continue, but it was like a pressure point where the pain keeps getting worse,” Krack told the press.
Aston Martin believes the problem may be related to the extremely low position used by drivers inside the cockpit. According to the director, the evolution of the cars in recent years has led competitors to adopt an increasingly reclined posture, something that is now being analyzed by the British team.
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“I think we need to reconsider the seat position a bit. With these cars, you try to keep the driver as low as possible,” explained the Silverstone team director. “When you look at how drivers have been sitting in recent years, you realize the position is increasingly reclined, almost lying down, and we need to check if we have gone too far with this,” he added.
Krack also indicated that Alonso would probably have endured the pain until the end if he had been fighting for more important positions during the race. However, since the Spaniard was far from the top positions and with no prospect of improvement in weather conditions, the team chose to avoid unnecessary risks.
The director made it clear that Aston Martin will continue investigating the case to try to prevent new episodes in the upcoming Formula 1 stages: “It is something we need to check,” Krack concluded when commenting on the team’s studies on the seat positioning in Alonso’s car.
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