Alonso: Aquaplaning caused crash

Fernando Alonso had blamed aquaplaning for his crash in Friday’s second free practice session ahead of the British Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver went off track late in the session while trying out Pirelli’s intermediate tyres following a stoppage in the rain that characterised the first day of running at Silverstone. The accident damaged the new front wing fitted to his F2012 at the time.

“The off track moment towards the end? The car was aquaplaning and it got away from me,” he said. “A shame about the front wing and now we must see if we can repair it.”

Alonso completed just four laps in the morning session and then toured the circuit 14 times in the afternoon before his accident and said that the limited running was purely down to the amount of wet tyres available for the weekend.

“We did very few laps because of the rain and the fact that, with the number of sets of rain tyres limited by the regulations, there was no sense in doing more running,” he said. “Rather, it was better to save tyres, given that the forecast is definitely not encouraging, as it is meant to rain all weekend.

“In other circumstances, if the rest of the weekend was meant to be dry maybe, then we could have done more running, but in these conditions, as I said, that really wasn’t the case. In the wet, the car seems okay, but it’s practically impossible to say where we are compared to the others. Tomorrow morning, let’s hope we can at least do a few laps in the dry so as to least have a rough idea of the behaviour of the Soft and Hard compounds that Pirelli has brought here.”