The genius Fernando Alonso radio tactic that means he’s ‘always teasing you’

Declaring Aston Martin’s rivals in “another league” and calling for “Plan B”, Mike Krack reckons Fernando Alonso was “teasing” his competitors in Saudi Arabia.

Qualifying fourth for the Jeddah race, Alonso brought his AMR24 home in fifth place as, despite losing a position to Oscar Piastri, he managed to avoid a repeat of his Bahrain slump.

Was it a serious concern, or was Alonso ‘teasing’ his rivals?

Racing Piastri and the Mercedes of George Russell, Alonso was in good form on Saturday night, much better than his team-mate Lance Stroll who brought out the Safety Car when he crashed early in the race after clipping the inside wall.

There was, however, one notably tense moment from the Spaniard when he asked the team if there was “any chance of Plan B, because they’re in another league”.

Krack was asked about this in his post-race debrief with the media and it was put to him that his driver ‘wasn’t that happy’.

He downplayed that, saying one can never be sure with Alonso if it’s a serious concern or if he’s “teasing” both the Aston Martin pit wall and his rivals.

“Yeah, he asked for the Plan B basically, ‘is there a Plan B?’,” Krack said.

“And you know Fernando is always teasing you, you have to be careful if he’s really honest about it because he knows all the strategies before.

“He knows all the field where it is, and sometimes he maybe even does it on purpose because he knows the competitors are listening so he’s one who talks.

“But he always wakes us up. As soon as you think for one lap you can breathe, there comes the radio call and he says ‘What about Plan B?’ and everybody is like Fernando always does so.

“We then had a look at the Plan B but you will not finish when you’re finished with Plan B.”

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Asked if he thought was ‘intentional’ on Saturday to throw off the competition, Krack said: “I don’t know.

“We were not in great shape again in the beginning of the Hards. It was only coming later when the car got better. And that’s something as I said also for the for the medium stint, we were not great at the beginning.”

Alonso held off Russell to claim fifth place with the double World Champion in “qualy” mode as he tried to keep the Mercedes driver out of DRS range.

Krack reckons Alonso put in those epic laps like “probably nobody else can”.

“We knew George behind, he had good speed, and we did not want to let him into the DRS so it was all the time between 1.5 and 1.0 in between them,” Krack told the media at the Jeddah circuit.

“And then it is always how much we’re managing and how much we’re pushing to get to the end. But I think he managed it like probably nobody else can.

“I don’t know where he got the gaps from but in my opinion he was always on top of the situation.”

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