Palmer slams Aston Martin: “Historic failure. Alonso looks like a test driver”

The ‘previous’ of 2017 Fernando Alonso and Jolyon Palmer have a ‘common’ past that some F1 fan with a good memory will remember: in the 2017 season, during the Italian GP, ​​Palmer – at the time a Renault driver – cut a chicane while fighting with Alonso and did not give back the position to the Spaniard who – already frustrated by the poor performance of his McLaren – thundered furiously at his English colleague. “Palmer has to give me my position back – he said over the radio – what does he do?”. Then, warned of the five-second penalty imposed on his rival, he said that the sanction was “a joke”, judging it insufficient. Subsequently, when Alonso was told that Palmer had finally withdrawn from the GP, Alonso came out with the epic team radio in which he only said “karma!”. Almost a decade later Alonso is still in the car while Palmer has become a highly regarded technical analyst for the official F1 website. In a recent episode of the F1 Nation podcast, the former Renault representative spoke about the serious technical crisis that the Aston Martin-Honda team is going through, not sparing harsh criticism and a ruthless comment (but unfortunately supported by the reality of the facts) regarding the two-time world champion from Asturias. Historic crisis, Alonso test driver “In Japan they were very slow. Obviously they are solving the problems, but they had to make adjustments just to allow the car to finish the race. The situation is serious – underlined Palmer – what we are witnessing is one of the biggest failures in history. Aston Martin can only finish a race if it runs with very little power to try to get some handling and reliability and they managed to get only one car to the finish line after three Grands Prix. It is terrible.” Palmer then focused on Alonso’s situation although his words, rather than a criticism of the #14, seem rather to be a certification of his total impotence: “For Fernando we are back to 2002 (when he was third driver in Renault, ed.). He has returned to being a test driver after so many years. This is Aston Martin at the moment. It’s really a shame that they are not competitive. In Suzuka, Fernando arrived behind a Cadillac. They are really behind. There is nothing at stake Neither for him nor for Stroll. Every weekend they show up at the track, ride around and report comments. At this point, it doesn’t even matter anymore. It’s clearly Honda’s job and it doesn’t look like they’ll find a quick solution. Before the Japanese Grand Prix they still didn’t know what was causing the vibrations.” Will it depend on karma?