World champion Fernando Alonso has bucked the trend of his racing peers by electing to return to Europe between the opening two flyaway rounds of the season.
While his teammate Lewis Hamilton avoids the 20-hour flight and jetlag by touring Australia and Thailand with his friend and colleague Adrian Sutil, Spaniard Alonso has reportedly decided to return to Woking (UK) to test new solutions for his MP4-22 in the state of the art McLaren driver simulator.
Alonso, 25, recently enthused about McLaren’s simulator by observing that “compared to ours, Renault’s is like a (Sony) PlayStation”.
It is understood that the Mercedes-powered team wants to test new Malaysian GP-spec updates in the simulator in case they are not ready for the upcoming pre-race test in Sepang, after discovering that Ferrari’s long-run advantage is as much as a full second per lap.
