Fernando Alonso says it is “wrong” that Formula 1 broadcasts focus on his negative comments, selling him as a “grumpy guy”.

2024 has been a difficult season for the Spaniard and his Aston Martin team as they’ve fallen back into Formula 1’s midfield having regularly challenged for podiums last year.

Fernando Alonso: FOM has this fix with me, with bad comments

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Alonso put the team on blast in Friday’s practice at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when he finished down in 11th place, a full second off the pace.

“Worst car ever, and worst traffic preparation ever… Next time I will do the out-lap myself,” he raged over the radio.

But a day later and after some set-up changes from Aston Martin, the double World Champion was much happier with his AMR24 and qualified P8.

He though, wasn’t happy with Formula One Management, who are in charge of the broadcasting the sport.

“It was bad traffic,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com of his Friday complaints. “It was frustration building.

“But yeah, as usual, you know, some comments are good, some comments are bad, but FOM has this fix with me, with bad comments. But I’m happy with that, it’s their job.

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“Yesterday I had some positive things [to say] as well but as I said, FOM, they have to sell that I’m the grumpy guy. They tried for many years and they will not succeed.

“I didn’t have a good time [in practice] but I think all these conversations are very private with your engineer. You are trying sometimes different things. You speak about some out-lap preparations that maybe I don’t agree with the engineers.

“They want to try anyway, it doesn’t work. So you tell them, ‘Wow, you know this – we knew it beforehand’, or something like that.

“But when you don’t have all that context behind and you just put the radio message, it’s just wrong. But it is the way they do it.”

The Spaniard went on to applaud Aston Martin’s set-up changes, saying the team managed to find the right operating window for the car on the Yas Marina circuit.

“Today I said that I had a good feeling,” he said. “So yeah, I mean, we started on the wrong foot, for sure, the car was very disconnected front and rear. They were not talking to each other.

“We made some set-up changes overnight. We didn’t succeed in improving the performance, because FP3, we were 17th and 19th. So still not there. So we made further changes before qualifying, and it seems that we found the window where the car is happier.

“So yeah, these cars are so critical, the operating window is so narrow that it is not easy to find it. It seems that we did it before qualy. Happy to start eighth, but it’s going to be a tough race tomorrow.”

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