Alonso does not plan to return to F1

Whether Alonso returns to F1 remains to be seen, but it certainly does not sound like it given his negative comments. Besides the Indy 500, Alonso may turn to IndyCar fulltime at some point

Fernando Alonso will walk away from F1 after this weekend’s Abu Dhabi GP with questions about whether a possible return is on the cards down the line. Today he says no.

“The rules change went in the wrong direction," he told ESPN in the build-up to the Yas Marina race, “because now the teams have very little room to play and to use creativity into strategies or anything like that.

“There is fixed fuel for everyone, a fixed fuel flow to put in the engine that is the same for everyone. The same tires for everyone, the same weight distribution for everyone. The same tyre pressure, mandatory for everyone, the same camber for everyone.

“In a way it helped the less talented people. They train a lot in the simulator, they arrive to the new circuits knowing exactly where are the bumps, where are the curbs that you can take, where are the difficult spots and then into the race, normally there is only one optimum way to arrive to the end.

“It’s all about how to save the energy, the tires, whatever that the engineers tell you to do, you just follow that instruction. You have a little bit of room for instinct in different parts of the race but normally it’s less optimum if you try to do it yourself. I think when we didn’t have all that information it was more you and the car on a Sunday afternoon and I think it was more about driver input."

So will the McLaren driver, who recently said he won’t rule out making a comeback down the line, return in 2021 when the sport overhauls the regulations?

“I don’t think so," he said. “I think at that time, 2021, it will be a little bit too late.

“I don’t know for certain because it’s difficult to know how you will feel in two weeks’ time, so I don’t know in two years’ time, but to have the energy to start back up and to put full dedication and full commitment to something when you’re 39 or 40 years old … it’s going to be more difficult than now.

“I am not planning that."