Alonso clarifies ‘didn’t care’ comment

Fernando Alonso has clarified his “didn’t care too much” comments after Sunday’s French GP, saying it was related to McLaren giving him the gap to the guys running fifth and sixth.

The double World Champion spent much of the Paul Ricard race running at the back, or at least very near the back, of the field.

On a weekend where McLaren suffered their worst qualifying of this season and lacked pace in race trim too, Alonso felt the pit wall was a bit “overexcited” when passing on information.

“On the radio the team was definitely overexcited, telling me the gaps with the fifth guy, the sixth guy,” he explained.

“I was last after the Safety Car and I had a problem with the brakes overheating, I had one set of tyres for the whole race because we stopped on lap one to fit the yellow tyres so I think it was a defensive race.”

He added: “It was not frustration but we know that this weekend we’ve been quite uncompetitive.”