Across the midway mark of a sweltering Losail race, Alonso urged the staff to provide you with an answer after feeling a burning ache in his seat.
“The seat is burning, mate,” he stated on the staff radio. “Something we are able to do on the pit cease? Throw me water or one thing!”
The staff could not do a lot to supply some aid for the Spaniard, however afterwards staff principal Mike Krack defined the burning seat is a recurring theme that it’s making an attempt to repair, and it was exacerbated by Qatar’s excessive warmth.
“Sure, it is true. He reported on it already a few instances,” Krack stated when requested if the difficulty had occurred earlier than.
“We have been engaged on it. And it isn’t that now we have not performed something. We had it additionally in Singapore, which we thought was a lot, significantly better.
“However then clearly, now we have one other set of maximum circumstances, so I feel we’re not removed from air con if it continues like that.”
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin F1 Workforce, Lando Norris, McLaren, on the grid
Photograph by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
When requested why the AMR23’s seat will get so sizzling, Krack stated: “You will have hydraulic traces, you have got ECUs round you. They’re all heating up, and also you attempt to isolate the seat from it.
“But additionally, you don’t want to have any sort of energetic cooling as a result of it is simply weight.”
Alonso revealed that the burning sensation on the right-hand aspect of the seat already began occurring throughout the first 15 laps.
“I feel for Lance and myself we struggled somewhat bit with temperature within the seat on the right-hand aspect,” Alonso stated.
“I obtained a burn within the first 15 laps, so I even requested on the radio if they might throw me some water or one thing on the pitstop, which apparently just isn’t allowed. So yeah, it was fairly excessive.
“We’ve got been coping with some points [before]. At present was excessive.”
Alonso likened the circumstances at Losail, which nearly precipitated team-mate Stroll to faint and compelled Williams’ Logan Sargeant to retire with a heatstroke, to a Dakar Rally check he accomplished with Toyota in August 2019.
“I had a check right here with Nasser in August earlier than Qatar and it was just like in the present day,” the two-time world champion added. “Qatar at all times on this time of the yr is sort of excessive.”
Regardless of the seat points and an off-track tour, the Spaniard endured to complete sixth, whereas Stroll dropped out of the factors after repeated monitor limits penalties.
Extra reporting by Adam Cooper