Alonso ‘struggling to feel hands and feet’ before Chinese GP retirement

Fernando Alonso says he was struggling to feel his hands and his feet for a spell of the Chinese Grand Prix before retiring his Aston Martin due to excessive vibrations.

Aston Martin and Honda have been working to reduce the impact of vibrations on both the battery – causing reliability issues – and the drivers, who estimated they could complete no more than 25 laps in one run in the season-opening race in Melbourne. One week later in Shanghai, both cars finished the 19-lap Sprint and then Alonso reached lap 32 of the grand prix before retiring.

“The starts are fun,” Alonso said. “Same as in Australia – the car seems to start really well. On lap 1 it's true that we all have the same level of battery, which is full. Then we enter in this battery world championship and in that we are not as good as the others.

“I could not probably finish the race anyway. The vibrations level were very high. At one point, from lap 20 to 35, I was struggling a little bit to feel my hands and my feet. We were one lap behind, we were last, and it was probably no point to keep on going.”

Alonso says the car had been slightly easier to drive in terms of vibrations for much of the weekend, but attributed that to reducing the power unit’s output prior to the race.

“It was worse [in the race] than any other session in the weekend, to be honest. For whatever reason, I don't know. Some of the steps we did were achieved artificially. I mean, just lowering the rpm of the engine and things like that, so everything vibrates less.

“But in the race, obviously, you still need to go high in some of the rpm when you make an overtake move, or when you have to recharge or something like that. Over time, it's more difficult. It's more demanding.”

After challenging back-to-back races, Alonso says the slightly longer gap to the Japanese Grand Prix is unlikely to be large enough to implement major improvements to the situation.

“Obviously, from Australia to China, we only had five days. The engine was exactly the same as in Australia. Now we have two weeks, so we need more time in the dyno," he said. "We need to give Honda more time to understand the vibrations and where they come from.

“Probably we’ve fixed the battery isolation, even though I think Lance [Stroll] had a problem also [in the race], so I don't know exactly what was the problem. But, all in all, we need to give Honda more time.”