Sep.6 (GMM) Aston Martin has dismissed widespread reports about the health of Fernando Alonso’s new hypercar.
This week, the Silverstone based Formula 1 team and its carmaker parent proudly boasted that two-time champion Alonso received delivery of his custom multi-million dollar ‘Valkyrie’ hypercar – “a true F1 car for the road”.
The Spaniard, according to the press release, drove his new Adrian Newey-designed machine “out of the iconic Monte Carlo Bay Hotel”.
But in the hours before the announcement hit journalists’ inboxes, residents and visitors in the Principality also spotted the Alonso-branded car apparently broken down – and then being hauled away on the back of a tow-truck.
Tobias Gruner, a writer for Auto Motor und Sport, said suspecting a mechanical breakdown was understandable, as the “complex electric system is said to occasionally exhibit small glitches”.
Indeed, footage of Alonso’s stationary Valkyrie depicted an Aston Martin clad employee in the cockpit with a laptop. “But when we asked, Aston Martin assured us that the arrival and departure on the truck was planned and not the result of a breakdown,” said Gruner.
“The car was transported to another location at the request of the new owner,” he concluded.