Fernando Alonso will miss media day at the Japanese Grand Prix after the birth of his first child.
The 44-year-old’s absence was announced by Aston Martin on Wednesday morning, who detailed that Alonso would miss Thursday’s press activities for “personal family reasons.”
It has since been revealed that Alonso’s partner, Melissa Jimenez, has given birth to their first baby.
Aston Martin insisted Alonso will be “at the track in time for Friday”, 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’s mandatory young driver sessions. Alonso will step back in the car for FP2.
Aston have endured a horrid start to the 2026 season, blighted by issues with power unit partner Honda and vibrations on the AMR26 car.
Ahead of the season-opener in Australia, team principal Adrian Newey revealed that Alonso and teammate Lance Stroll were concerned about “permanent nerve damage” to their hands and feet as a result of the violent oscillations of the car.
Alonso retired from the last grand prix in China due to discomfort in the car, with onboard footage showing the two-time F1 world champion regularly taking his hands off the steering wheel in order to avoid the vibrations.
“It was difficult, we found more vibrations than any other session of the weekend,” Alonso said afterwards. “Physically, I could not continue much longer. I started to lose the feeling in my hands and feets, it was not a nice feeling.”
Stroll retired earlier in the race, due to a “suspected battery issue.”
Aston are, alongside new outfit Cadillac, one of two teams rooted to the bottom of the championship table on zero points. This weekend’s race at Suzuka is Honda’s home event.
Honda’s trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara said ahead of race three: “In 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.
“We 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.
“We are not at the level where we wanted to be going into this weekend, but we will keep working hard to maximise our package.”
