Barcelona F1 test: Alonso to stay in hospital after concussion

The McLaren driver hit the inside wall on the exit of Turn 3 just before lunch, and he was airlifted to hospital where CT and MRI scans revealed that he had not suffered any physical injuries.

However, due to the fact that Alonso suffered a concussion in the impact, he will be kept in hospital overnight as a precaution.

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said: "Fernando's accident was just one of those things that happens in testing.

"Fortunately, he's fine, but was concussed during the accident, which therefore required an overnight stay in hospital. That's normal practice.

"Inevitably, some media reports have sought to exaggerate the severity of the incident - it was just a normal testing accident."

Jenson Button was supposed to take over from Alonso for the afternoon running, but the team decided not to attempt to repair the car in time to run again before the end of the test.

"While the car wasn't particularly badly damaged, it was enough of an impact to warrant quite a lengthy check of the gearbox and power unit systems," added Boullier.

"Given the time needed to carry out such an analysis, we decided to bring the curtain down on our test a few hours earlier than anticipated.

"It's been a tough week for the whole team, but we'll be back, and pushing harder than ever, in Barcelona next week."

McLaren suffered a troubled second test, logging only 124 laps over the four days as problems with an MGU-K seal plagued its programme.