Alonso shares details on back injury as Aston Martin enjoy strong Friday in Hungary

Fernando Alonso has opened up on his back injury that forced him to sit out FP1 for the Hungarian Grand Prix, before he then finished fifth fastest in FP2.

Aston Martin released a statement shortly before the opening session of the Budapest weekend, announcing that Alonso would be replaced by reserve driver Felipe Drugovich for FP1, in order to allow extra time to relax a muscular injury in his back.

Returning to the action for the late-afternoon second hour of track action, Alonso appeared comfortable in the AMR25, as he ended the day in fifth, one place behind team mate Lance Stroll.

“It’s the same as yesterday. It’s going to be like this the whole weekend,” said Alonso when asked about the pain.

“I have a small injury on my muscle on the back in the lumbar area and I needed some rest, but the summer break is coming, so it’s another two days of managing the comfort in the seat.

“Yesterday, we found different solutions with pads and other things that are working fine, so today, I had no pain in FP2, so that is positive.”

While as much as possible is done to ensure the maximum comfort for a driver, Alonso conceded that others on the grid will “have small pain and discomfort here and there” given the efforts required behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car.

He added: “The thing is that we did an MRI last week just to check properly, and we saw a small injury in the muscle. So if you are a normal person, you would sit a little bit for two weeks, but I think it is manageable. I don’t have pain in the car, which is the main thing.”

Turning to the improved performance of Aston Martin in the early phase of the weekend, Alonso said: “Obviously, I missed FP1, but FP2 felt good. The balance is still not in the window where I would probably like the car to be. There’s a bit of understeer mid-corner, and I struggled to rotate the car on low speed, but normal for a first practice of the weekend.

“Let’s see what we can change overnight. A couple of tests that the guys did in FP1, we need to review the data and put together the fastest car for tomorrow.”

Despite finishing fourth and less than one-tenth off third-placed Charles Leclerc, Stroll was coy on where Aston Martin sits in the pecking order this weekend.

“The timesheets on Friday, it’s always hard to know what everyone is doing with fuel loads and all that, but the car felt good and we’ll see what we can do tomorrow,” he said. “It felt good today - a good balance.”

Drugovich’s “last minute” call to action provided the Brazilian with a far busier day than anticipated, with the surprise nature of his outing meaning he hadn’t spent the usual time in the simulator or preparing.

“I just got given the targets and off we went, and I think it was a pretty good session,” he said.

He continued: “I think everything was quite smooth. We got the data done that we needed. I even got a soft tyre run, which is always nice. My lap was a bit messy, full of traffic, and then after I had a massive lock-up into Turn 1 in the second half, which was probably not ideal, but I needed to try to get some fun out of it, so it was all good, no problem with that.”