Fernando Alonso says he won’t be racing in Formula 1 in 2021, when the championship’s new tyre regulations come into force.

Asked by RaceFans what he thought of plans to introduce 18-inch wheels in 2021, Alonso said “I think it’s not a big thing. I will not be here in 2021 so I don’t care.”

Alonso entered F1 in 2001 and started his 300th race earlier this year.

F1 also plans to reduce the width of the front wheels and ban the use of tyre warmers from 2021. Alonso’s team mate Stoffel Vandoorne played down the effect of the changes.

“I don’t think it will change very much,” he said. “There’s already a lot of series that don’t have tyre blankets so I think whatever tyre manufacturer it will be I think they will get on top of that.

“The rims they’ve kind of tested a couple of years ago as well. I think it’s quite easy for the teams to adjust to that.”

Alonso said F1 should prioritise addressing the tyre rules for practice sessions. Few drivers took part in the final practice session in Germany, which Alonso blamed on the tyre rules.

“For me it is more important to solve the problem like [this]. It happened in France and it happened [in Germany] again.

“When it rains in FP3 we have 50,000 people in the grandstand watching no action because we don’t have an extra set of tyres to run in FP3.

“The tyres are the ones you use in qualifying and in the race and in case of a wet qualifying or a wet race you save the tyres and we have 50,000 people here and millions of people watching television with no car action. So we need to fix some other things before the future rules.”

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2021 F1 season