Fernando Alonso backs Adrian Newey's design push after F1 seat issues

Fernando Alonso says he backs Adrian Newey’s philosophy of pushing the limits in all areas, including the original seating position in his Aston Martin Formula 1 car.

The Spaniard was forced to retire from the Canadian Gran Prix because of pain caused by an uncomfortable seating position, having already flagged it earlier in the weekend.

The team has subsequently addressed the issue with an adjustment, helped by Alonso coming to the Aston Martin garage in Monaco on Tuesday in order to sit in the car and try different positions.

Alonso faced discomfort because, as usual, Newey wanted to push the limits and have the driver in the optimum position in terms of car performance.

“Sure, that's always his philosophy, to try to find the limit,” said Alonso when asked about the subject by Crash.net.

“When you find the limit, you go half a step back. That's the way it is, and that's where we are at the moment.

“And not only there, there are many different areas in the team that we are pushing the limits, knowing that maybe we could find maybe immediate performance, we go back to a more known place.

"But we prefer to keep this philosophy in certain areas of the car, because we believe that it will unlock more performance in the near future.”

Although he obviously won’t try it on track until Friday Alonso is confident that his issues have been addressed by the revised position.

“We worked a little bit last week in online meetings,” said the Spaniard. “We tried to get a different position in the car, and then on Tuesday, obviously, I live here, so it was very easy for me to pass by the garage and work a little bit in the afternoon.

"We had four – I think – different seat positions, and we changed a lot since Canada.

“So I think I'm very relaxed, and optimistic that the problem of Canada, that I was very uncomfortable, and with pain, is not anymore there, as we went back nearly to the 2025 seat position – so basically we were in a known baseline now. This is not an experiment.”

Expanding on how the AMR26 compared with previous cars he’s driven he said: “There's small differences always in new seats that you make, in new cockpit space, and one or two millimetres of different angle or different pressure point underneath, your hip area, whatever, it can press some nerves, and then you start losing sensitivity, and that was the case.

“It's not a big change. I think if I sit in the garage in different seats from the last three or four years, I will not notice anything, because they are so similar, but then after 20 or 30 laps, you can start feeling the difference. But as I said, I think that should be resolved now.”

Alonso acknowledged that the issue might have been identified and resolved earlier had Aston been able to do more laps in testing and the early races.

“Definitely. I mean, the longest run in Bahrain, I think it was eight laps, so we're still in Bahrain preparation in certain things in the team! We were not fighting for the points or anything in Canada. I think if I was in the points, I would keep driving, probably.”

Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack shares Alonso’s optimism about the changes.

“We were here from Tuesday morning with Fernando,” he said. “It’s good that he lives around the corner here. So a lot of work went into it on Tuesday with a lot of variations. Now, the driving is the real test.

“You see it statically, it's not always the same, but I think we made this a small step in the right direction. He was, he was mildly confident that this is going to be an improvement, but I would not be surprised if we have to one or the other tweak the sessions to get him really comfortable.”

Krack added: "You cannot just change one thing, because then you need to change the pedals, you need to check the regulation height, and all these kind of things, the steering wheel distance. So it's never one single thing, so it's a complete set of changes, and that makes it a bit complicated.”