McLaren and Fernando Alonso launched the new MCL33 for Formula 1 pre-season testing in Barcelona. But the team met an unfortunate event, when the Spaniard tried to ace the day.
The Spaniard lost control of the car at the last corner of Spain’s Circuit de Catalunya.
The two-times world champion who aims to win this season lost the car to spinning when the right rear wheel came off at the end of the six lap.
McLren are still investigating the issue but the initial comments blamed “wheel nut” for the bad day.
Alonso was on the quest to put forward the best time at the Barcelona’s track during testing, when his car crashed.
Alonso was running the MCL33 on the super-soft tyres, when one of them loose break from the car and it went straight to the pit.
He appeared in pits with a piece from the wreck that he had collected while inspecting the car after the incident. The piece seemed to be the part of rear wheel assembly which might had caused the incident.
Zak Brown, McLaren Executive Director, was optimistic and calm about it as he considered it “No big deal at all.”
He expressed his views, “There is no drama. It is quite an easy fix.
“It is what testing is for. All the teams will have a variety of issues. we will lose very little time.”
While Alonso landed back to pit, Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was able to set the day for himself with the fastest time of the morning, leaving Mercedes’ and Ferrari drivers Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen behind.
Ricciardo set the time at 20.179 second, with medium tyres mounted. He had the margin of 0.17 sec to Bottas, who was driving with same type of tyres, while Raikkonen done the lap with 20.506 seconds and then Hulkenberg finishes with 20.547 seconds.
Alonso was the eighth fastest on the track, while he managed to be on track but could not make any further than what he had set before spin on super soft tyres.
Brendon Hartley, who had joined hands with the abandoned partner of McLaren, Honda, was able to manage 72 laps.
McLaren had changed engine partner due to poor reliability and performance issues to Renault, with which the team seemed to be satisfied with.
