{"id":559580,"date":"2026-03-25T11:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T11:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559580\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T11:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T11:06:11","slug":"fernando-alonso-to-miss-f1-japanese-gp-media-day-after-birth-of-first-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559580\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Alonso to miss F1 Japanese GP media day after birth of first child"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fernando Alonso<\/a> will miss media day at the Japanese Grand Prix<\/a> after the birth of his first child. <\/p>\n

The 44-year-old\u2019s absence was announced by Aston Martin<\/a> on Wednesday morning, who detailed that Alonso would miss Thursday\u2019s press activities for \u201cpersonal family reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n

It has since been revealed that Alonso\u2019s partner, Melissa Jimenez, has given birth to their first baby. <\/p>\n

Aston Martin insisted Alonso will be \u201cat the track<\/a> in time for Friday\u201d, when practice will take place in Suzuka. Alonso is scheduled to miss the first practice session anyhow, with reserve driver Jak Crawford deputising in one of the team\u2019s mandatory young driver sessions. Alonso will step back in the car for FP2. <\/p>\n

Aston have endured a horrid start to the 2026 season, blighted by issues with power unit partner Honda<\/a> and vibrations on the AMR26 car. <\/p>\n

Ahead of the season-opener in Australia, team principal Adrian Newey<\/a> revealed that Alonso and teammate Lance Stroll were concerned about \u201cpermanent nerve damage\u201d to their hands and feet as a result of the violent oscillations of the car. <\/p>\n

Alonso retired from the last grand prix in China due to discomfort in the car, with onboard footage<\/a> showing the two-time F1<\/a> world champion regularly taking his hands off the steering wheel in order to avoid the vibrations. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was difficult, we found more vibrations than any other session of the weekend,\u201d Alonso said afterwards. \u201cPhysically, I could not continue much longer. I started to lose the feeling in my hands and feets, it was not a nice feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FernandoFernando Alonso will miss media day in Japan after the birth of his first child with partner Melissa Jimenez (left) (Getty)<\/p>\n

Stroll retired earlier in the race, due to a \u201csuspected battery issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aston are, alongside new outfit Cadillac, one of two teams rooted to the bottom of the championship table on zero points. This weekend\u2019s race at Suzuka is Honda\u2019s home event. <\/p>\n

Honda\u2019s trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara said ahead of race three: \u201cIn China, we made some progress in terms of battery reliability thanks to a reduction in the vibration affecting the systems, but we must find more solutions to establish the cause of the vibrations affecting the drivers. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have also focused our efforts in the gap between China and Japan to continue to improve our reliability, but still our performance is not where we want it to be, especially regarding energy management. Suzuka Circuit is a tough track for this, so we have been using the learnings from Australia and China to prepare better for the Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not at the level where we wanted to be going into this weekend, but we will keep working hard to maximise our package.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-559580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}