Fernando Alonso has spoken out against Formula 1’s current regulations, claiming the sport has been “going in the wrong direction”, and the move to shake things up in 2017 is proof of that.
F1 bosses collectively agreed to introduce a raft of changes aimed at making the cars faster by between “five and six seconds a lap”, believing this will reinvigorate the sport and draw viewers back.
Alonso backs these changes, claiming modern cars are much too slow when compared to the machinery he drove and won two titles in during the 2005 and 2006 seasons.
“If they happen, we will get rules like seven or eight years ago,” he said on Wednesday. “For the last four or five years we’ve been going in the wrong direction.
“They [cars in 2006] were eight seconds quicker,” added the 33-year-old. “The engineers did some calculations. The winner of Malaysia this year would have been lapped six times by the winner of Malaysia in 2006.
“So when you are eight seconds a lap quicker, that is very demanding physically and mentally and everything was pushed to the limit.”
Alonso is hopeful that future changes to make the cars “the quickest in the world” will help boost F1’s popularity amid dwindling race fans and television audiences.
“We cannot run one second quicker than GP2 cars because the grandstands are empty,” he said. “It is a sign it was not going in the right direction.
“Hopefully now it is a good change and we can see the fastest cars in the world in the future.”
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