F1 broadcast criticised in 'protagonist of the race' rebuke

Fernando Alonso has taken aim at F1 for being "poorly broadcast", with the Aston Martin driver unhappy at out-of-context team radio messages being aired.

The two-time F1 drivers' champion was caught venting his frustration at Lewis Hamilton late during the Singapore Grand Prix in an expletive-laden rant.

His adversary saw the funny side of it and decided to poke fun at Alonso on social media, but the 44-year-old is less than satisfied with the quality of the broadcasting — and the selective use of team radio to complement it — more generally.

Ahead of the United States Grand Prix, Alonso, along with Ollie Bearman and Franco Colapinto, were asked how they felt about everything they say in the cockpit of their cars being available for broadcast.

When it came the 32-time grand prix winner's turn to answer, he did not hold back, providing media, including RacingNews365, his unfiltered opinion, replying: "Unnecessary sometimes, poorly broadcast and chosen by the one choosing which radios to broadcast.

"Misunderstood 99.9% of the time because they are private conversations with your engineer or your team that maybe you went through on Sunday morning in the strategy meeting.

"You know, 'what happens if we come out of the pit stop in this scenario?' or 'what happens if on lap one we overtake two cars or we miss two positions?'

"So you have alternative plans on the strategy that, obviously, when you only broadcast one sentence, it's impossible to understand at home and the repercussion that it has."

Alonso argued that when team radio is "the protagonist of the race", something has gone badly wrong with the entertainment factor of that grand prix.

"But, yeah, sometimes when the radio broadcast is the protagonist of the race, that also is very sad, that the race was so poor in terms of entertainment," he added.

"So, yeah, that's something we need to improve all as a group in the sport."