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On Wednesday, Lewis Hamilton suffered a testing crash while driving for Ferrari in Barcelona. The Brit’s shunt came nine years after one of F1’s most bizarre pre-season incidents when Fernando Alonso found the wall on the same track while driving for McLaren.
Hamilton walked away from his crash unharmed, Alonso’s was much more serious. The two-time world champion crashed at the Turn Three right-hander at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya during pre-season testing in 2015 and was then airlifted to hospital.
After an assessment from doctors, Alonso was diagnosed with a concussion, and he was subsequently forced to miss the season opener in Melbourne. Kevin Magnussen replaced him, although the Dane’s McLaren suffered an engine failure on the way to the grid, and he couldn’t start the Grand Prix.
Alonso disputed this when he returned to action in Malaysia, “It was clear there was a problem in the car, but it was not found in the data,” he said. “There is not a clear answer. We definitely had a steering problem in Turn Three, and it locked to the right.”
The absence of a clear explanation sparked numerous fan-led theories. One widely-circulated version of events claimed that Alonso woke up in hospital believing that it was 1995 and that he was still enjoying his karting career with goals of reaching F1. The Spaniard shut down these rumours ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.
