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2021-01-31
Fernando is faster than you: In defence of Ferrari's race fix
In denying Felipe Massa a morale-boosting win one year after his horrific Hungary accident and bringing Formula 1 into disrepute with cloak-and-dagger team orders, Ferrari's call to hand the 2010 German Grand Prix to Fernando Alonso was widely unpopular. But, as LUKE SMITH argues, hindsight proved it was the right decision
Delivered in his distinguishable Yorkshire accent, Rob Smedley's message to Felipe Massa at the 2010 German Grand Prix would come to be a defining point in recent Formula 1 history.
When Smedley informed Massa that "Fernando [Alonso] is faster than you", prompting the Brazilian to slow and allow his team-mate into the lead, it led to outrage throughout the paddock.
Ferrari's rivals saw it as a complete flouting of the regulation against team orders (introduced as a result of Ferrari's actions in manipulating the result of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix as Rubens Barrichello gave up victory to Michael Schumacher). Red Bull team boss Christian Horner called it "the clearest team order I've ever seen" and said it was "wrong for the sport", while then-BBC pundit Eddie Jordan went as fast as saying Ferrari "should be ashamed". But as controversial as it may have been, it was in fact the right move from Ferrari.
Alonso was always going to be the driver who stood the best chance of winning the title for Ferrari. Arriving at Hockenheim, Massa had not scored a point for three races, while Alonso was in need of a big result having slipped 47 points behind points leader Lewis Hamilton after a nightmarish British Grand Prix compromised by a penalty for overtaking Robert Kubica's Renault outside track limits at the Club chicane.
Hamilton's team-mate Jenson Button was also in the thick of the fight, 12 points adrift on 133, while Red Bull drivers Mark Webber (128) and Sebastian Vettel (121) were also beginning to edge away from Alonso on 98.
Ferrari bounced back strongly in Germany, qualifying second and third behind Vettel, and needed to capitalise. As Vettel bogged down, Massa led a Ferrari 1-2 into the first corner and was able to retain his lead through the pitstops as Ferrari covered the undercutting Vettel.
But soon, Massa came under pressure from Alonso, who made attempts to pass around lap 21 only to be rebuffed and call it "ridiculous" that he could not get ahead. The Spaniard dropped to around 3.5 seconds behind, before making more gains and having another attempt, leaving him about a second off his team-mate from lap 40 onwards.
Vettel was around six seconds back from Alonso around the time the two Ferraris got close again, but took advantage by chipping away at the gap, reducing it to around five seconds by the time the switch was made on lap 49.
Victory for Massa would have been a wonderful story, coming a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix that left him with head injuries. But title wins in F1 are rarely built on sentimentality
Admittedly, it was a decent gap, but Vettel duly proved his pace by closing right up on Massa through the final stages of the race. He would cross the line just a second behind, while Alonso had streaked four seconds clear by the time they got to the chequered flag.
An awkward podium ceremony followed, but Alonso was fairly dismissive when responding to the accusation of using team orders. "We work for Ferrari," he said. "Ferrari pay us at the end of the month, and we try to score 43 points for the team." That is exactly what Ferrari had delivered on race day - and risked not achieving had it not swapped the drivers around.
The championship picture meant Ferrari could not realistically afford to let Alonso lose any more ground to the McLaren and Red Bull drivers in the standings. The form that followed only justified the decision: he would go on to score three wins and three other podiums in the final eight races, with his only non-podium race finish coming at the infamous Abu Dhabi finale.
Much of the fury from Ferrari's rivals focused on the breach of the sporting regulations, with Article 39.1 stating "team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited". Ferrari denied it had been a team order, but the nature of Smedley's message and the apology - "good lad, just stick with him now. Sorry." - meant it was hard to deny. The stewards duly handed out a $100,000 fine for bringing the sport into disrepute. 'Ferrari Farce' was the fitting cover line on that week's Autosport magazine.
But it was an open secret that team orders had always been part of F1, even since the 2002 ban. The beneficiary from that day, Schumacher, said after Hockenheim that "there are clear team orders" used at all teams, and "everybody accepts those." David Coulthard agreed with his former rival, saying in response to Jordan's comment on the BBC: "Every team up and down the pitlane gives team orders, and anybody who says they don't is lying."
It was hardly the first time Ferrari had prioritised one driver over the other to help their title hopes. The clearest example came again at expense of Massa at the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix, when the strategy was altered to allow Kimi Raikkonen to get ahead. Sure, that was the championship decider, but realistically, was Massa going to win the 2010 title? No - and victory ahead of Alonso would not have changed that.
It became abundantly clear to F1's rulemakers they could not police team orders, prompting the removal of the regulation at the end of the season. Since then, we've seen far more open and needless uses of team orders - take Valtteri Bottas' gifting of the 2018 Russian Grand Prix to Lewis Hamilton - which are now widely accepted. Morally, it's the same thing. The difference was the presence of the hard-to-police regulation in 2010 saying it was not allowed.
Victory for Massa would have been a wonderful story, coming a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix that left him with head injuries. But title wins in F1 are rarely built on sentimentality. It often takes hard, unpopular decisions that push the rules to their limits - something Ferrari had a knack for at the peak of its success.
It would prove to be the closest Massa would get to a post-accident victory in F1. He was typecast in his final years at Ferrari as Alonso's number two, with much of that feeling coming from the incident at Hockenheim. But even without that, the results made it hard to argue any other way.
Williams would give Massa some late-career success, taking a handful of podiums and that shock pole at the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix. But the fact he would never come as close to winning a grand prix again only makes Ferrari's call seem all the more cruel.
Harsh as it may have been, Ferrari did the right thing at Hockenheim. And without the miscue in Abu Dhabi that left Alonso toiling behind Vitaly Petrov, a narrow title victory over Vettel would have only justified it further.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/154830/in-defence-of-fernando-is-faster-than-you
2021-01-31
Fernando is faster than you: In defence of Ferrari's race fix
In denying Felipe Massa a morale-boosting win one year after his horrific Hungary accident and bringing Formula 1 into disrepute with cloak-and-dagger team orders, Ferrari's call to hand the 2010 German Grand Prix to Fernando Alonso was widely unpopular. But, as LUKE SMITH argues, hindsight proved it was the right decision
Delivered in his distinguishable Yorkshire accent, Rob Smedley's message to Felipe Massa at the 2010 German Grand Prix would come to be a defining point in recent Formula 1 history.
When Smedley informed Massa that "Fernando [Alonso] is faster than you", prompting the Brazilian to slow and allow his team-mate into the lead, it led to outrage throughout the paddock.
Ferrari's rivals saw it as a complete flouting of the regulation against team orders (introduced as a result of Ferrari's actions in manipulating the result of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix as Rubens Barrichello gave up victory to Michael Schumacher). Red Bull team boss Christian Horner called it "the clearest team order I've ever seen" and said it was "wrong for the sport", while then-BBC pundit Eddie Jordan went as fast as saying Ferrari "should be ashamed". But as controversial as it may have been, it was in fact the right move from Ferrari.
Alonso was always going to be the driver who stood the best chance of winning the title for Ferrari. Arriving at Hockenheim, Massa had not scored a point for three races, while Alonso was in need of a big result having slipped 47 points behind points leader Lewis Hamilton after a nightmarish British Grand Prix compromised by a penalty for overtaking Robert Kubica's Renault outside track limits at the Club chicane.
Hamilton's team-mate Jenson Button was also in the thick of the fight, 12 points adrift on 133, while Red Bull drivers Mark Webber (128) and Sebastian Vettel (121) were also beginning to edge away from Alonso on 98.
Ferrari bounced back strongly in Germany, qualifying second and third behind Vettel, and needed to capitalise. As Vettel bogged down, Massa led a Ferrari 1-2 into the first corner and was able to retain his lead through the pitstops as Ferrari covered the undercutting Vettel.
But soon, Massa came under pressure from Alonso, who made attempts to pass around lap 21 only to be rebuffed and call it "ridiculous" that he could not get ahead. The Spaniard dropped to around 3.5 seconds behind, before making more gains and having another attempt, leaving him about a second off his team-mate from lap 40 onwards.
Vettel was around six seconds back from Alonso around the time the two Ferraris got close again, but took advantage by chipping away at the gap, reducing it to around five seconds by the time the switch was made on lap 49.
Victory for Massa would have been a wonderful story, coming a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix that left him with head injuries. But title wins in F1 are rarely built on sentimentality
Admittedly, it was a decent gap, but Vettel duly proved his pace by closing right up on Massa through the final stages of the race. He would cross the line just a second behind, while Alonso had streaked four seconds clear by the time they got to the chequered flag.
An awkward podium ceremony followed, but Alonso was fairly dismissive when responding to the accusation of using team orders. "We work for Ferrari," he said. "Ferrari pay us at the end of the month, and we try to score 43 points for the team." That is exactly what Ferrari had delivered on race day - and risked not achieving had it not swapped the drivers around.
The championship picture meant Ferrari could not realistically afford to let Alonso lose any more ground to the McLaren and Red Bull drivers in the standings. The form that followed only justified the decision: he would go on to score three wins and three other podiums in the final eight races, with his only non-podium race finish coming at the infamous Abu Dhabi finale.
Much of the fury from Ferrari's rivals focused on the breach of the sporting regulations, with Article 39.1 stating "team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited". Ferrari denied it had been a team order, but the nature of Smedley's message and the apology - "good lad, just stick with him now. Sorry." - meant it was hard to deny. The stewards duly handed out a $100,000 fine for bringing the sport into disrepute. 'Ferrari Farce' was the fitting cover line on that week's Autosport magazine.
But it was an open secret that team orders had always been part of F1, even since the 2002 ban. The beneficiary from that day, Schumacher, said after Hockenheim that "there are clear team orders" used at all teams, and "everybody accepts those." David Coulthard agreed with his former rival, saying in response to Jordan's comment on the BBC: "Every team up and down the pitlane gives team orders, and anybody who says they don't is lying."
It was hardly the first time Ferrari had prioritised one driver over the other to help their title hopes. The clearest example came again at expense of Massa at the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix, when the strategy was altered to allow Kimi Raikkonen to get ahead. Sure, that was the championship decider, but realistically, was Massa going to win the 2010 title? No - and victory ahead of Alonso would not have changed that.
It became abundantly clear to F1's rulemakers they could not police team orders, prompting the removal of the regulation at the end of the season. Since then, we've seen far more open and needless uses of team orders - take Valtteri Bottas' gifting of the 2018 Russian Grand Prix to Lewis Hamilton - which are now widely accepted. Morally, it's the same thing. The difference was the presence of the hard-to-police regulation in 2010 saying it was not allowed.
Victory for Massa would have been a wonderful story, coming a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix that left him with head injuries. But title wins in F1 are rarely built on sentimentality. It often takes hard, unpopular decisions that push the rules to their limits - something Ferrari had a knack for at the peak of its success.
It would prove to be the closest Massa would get to a post-accident victory in F1. He was typecast in his final years at Ferrari as Alonso's number two, with much of that feeling coming from the incident at Hockenheim. But even without that, the results made it hard to argue any other way.
Williams would give Massa some late-career success, taking a handful of podiums and that shock pole at the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix. But the fact he would never come as close to winning a grand prix again only makes Ferrari's call seem all the more cruel.
Harsh as it may have been, Ferrari did the right thing at Hockenheim. And without the miscue in Abu Dhabi that left Alonso toiling behind Vitaly Petrov, a narrow title victory over Vettel would have only justified it further.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/154830/in-defence-of-fernando-is-faster-than-you
Racing lines: Alonso's Alpine climb gets more daunting
Why a broken jaw might be the least of the Spaniard’s problems
by Damien Smith25 February 2021
Twenty years ago, on 16 March 2001, French endurance racing veteran Bob Wollek was cycling back from Sebring 12 Hours practice when he was hit by a van and killed. For the 57-year-old to lose his life in such a senseless manner was unspeakably cruel, especially having survived a lifetime of racing, first on skis and then through four decades of motorsport.
Wollek’s tragedy immediately sprung to mind this month when news first filtered through that Fernando Alonso had been knocked from his bicycle during a training ride in Switzerland. The 39-yearold Spaniard collided with a car outside a supermarket car park and sustained a fractured jaw. Nasty and painful, but a fortunate escape in the context of Brilliant Bob’s dreadful fate.
More than a pain in the jaw
Alonso just can’t help making headlines, and we can expect many more from him during a 2021 season in which he will make a dramatic return to Formula 1 with Alpine – his third stint at the team with which he won two world championships way back in 2005 and 2006, when it was known as Renault.
Alonso is in fantastic nick, especially for a man who will soon turn 40, but a broken jaw is a setback that he could do without as he prepares for his first F1 season since 2018. Pulling on a helmet might be uncomfortable, but Alpine insists he will be ready for pre-season tests on March 12-14 in Bahrain. Knowing Alonso, the injury will only add fire to his ‘warrior spirit’ and force him to shine in adversity, just as he did for years in disappointing Ferraris and poor McLarens.
But there are other potential hurdles in his comeback that might be harder to overcome. The transition of Renault into Alpine has occurred amid a degree of management confusion at the Enstone-based team that leads right to the top of Renault and the appointment of Luca de Meo as chairman. Cyril Abiteboul was lined up to rise from team principal into a more senior, over-arching role across the Alpine brand but instead left the firm, while two men find themselves seemingly tasked with the same job of leading the F1 team: executive director Marcin Budkowski and highly-rated F1 newcomer Davide Brivio, who has been hired following his success in leading Suzuki to the 2020 MotoGP title. Who is in charge? It’s not entirely clear.
And if it’s not clear to Alonso, a man not exactly shy in professing his opinions, the comeback could be derailed before it has even built a head of steam – especially if the car isn’t as quick as the McLaren and Aston Martin (formerly Racing Point).
Racing teams are at their best when there’s clear accountability within their ranks – which is precisely why the convoluted internal politics that tends to clog major car manufacturers so often leads to an embarrassing F1 farce. Remember the Ford/Jaguar debacle of 20-odd years ago? Renault/Alpine must get its house in order, and pronto.
Racing lines: Alonso's Alpine climb gets more daunting
Why a broken jaw might be the least of the Spaniard’s problems
by Damien Smith25 February 2021
Twenty years ago, on 16 March 2001, French endurance racing veteran Bob Wollek was cycling back from Sebring 12 Hours practice when he was hit by a van and killed. For the 57-year-old to lose his life in such a senseless manner was unspeakably cruel, especially having survived a lifetime of racing, first on skis and then through four decades of motorsport.
Wollek’s tragedy immediately sprung to mind this month when news first filtered through that Fernando Alonso had been knocked from his bicycle during a training ride in Switzerland. The 39-yearold Spaniard collided with a car outside a supermarket car park and sustained a fractured jaw. Nasty and painful, but a fortunate escape in the context of Brilliant Bob’s dreadful fate.
More than a pain in the jaw
Alonso just can’t help making headlines, and we can expect many more from him during a 2021 season in which he will make a dramatic return to Formula 1 with Alpine – his third stint at the team with which he won two world championships way back in 2005 and 2006, when it was known as Renault.
Alonso is in fantastic nick, especially for a man who will soon turn 40, but a broken jaw is a setback that he could do without as he prepares for his first F1 season since 2018. Pulling on a helmet might be uncomfortable, but Alpine insists he will be ready for pre-season tests on March 12-14 in Bahrain. Knowing Alonso, the injury will only add fire to his ‘warrior spirit’ and force him to shine in adversity, just as he did for years in disappointing Ferraris and poor McLarens.
But there are other potential hurdles in his comeback that might be harder to overcome. The transition of Renault into Alpine has occurred amid a degree of management confusion at the Enstone-based team that leads right to the top of Renault and the appointment of Luca de Meo as chairman. Cyril Abiteboul was lined up to rise from team principal into a more senior, over-arching role across the Alpine brand but instead left the firm, while two men find themselves seemingly tasked with the same job of leading the F1 team: executive director Marcin Budkowski and highly-rated F1 newcomer Davide Brivio, who has been hired following his success in leading Suzuki to the 2020 MotoGP title. Who is in charge? It’s not entirely clear.
And if it’s not clear to Alonso, a man not exactly shy in professing his opinions, the comeback could be derailed before it has even built a head of steam – especially if the car isn’t as quick as the McLaren and Aston Martin (formerly Racing Point).
Racing teams are at their best when there’s clear accountability within their ranks – which is precisely why the convoluted internal politics that tends to clog major car manufacturers so often leads to an embarrassing F1 farce. Remember the Ford/Jaguar debacle of 20-odd years ago? Renault/Alpine must get its house in order, and pronto.
10 of the best facts about Fernando Alonso
Date published: February 27 2021
Ahead of Fernando Alonso’s highly anticipated return to the grid, refresh your knowledge of the Spaniard with these 10 facts…
He was racing before he could count to 10, probably
Every driver who made it to Formula 1 got their careers started at a young age, but few would have been quite as young as Alonso was.
His older sister, Lorena, had little interest in the go-kart that their father had built her, but a three-year-old Fernando immediately fell in love with it. The pedals were adjusted for him, and his life as a racing driver began.
He spent the following four years driving it whenever he could before competing in his first race at the age of seven. Despite being the youngest driver, he won, and that would prove to be the case many times as he made his way through the ranks.
He’s the only Spanish F1 driver to win a race
Before Alonso came along, Spain hadn’t achieved a huge amount in F1. 11 countrymen had been on the grid over the years, but none had managed to claim a victory, and only once had one finished on the podium, in 1956.
El Nano began to change all that in just his second season on the grid. Driving for Renault, he crossed the line in the top three in three of the opening fives races before taking his and Spain’s maiden win in Hungary. And that was just the start of it.
Since then, he has gone to taste victory 31 more times – three on home turf – and single-handedly make F1 one of his nation’s most popular sports.
He’s the last driver to win his country its first World Championship
He cemented himself as Spain’s best F1 driver ever when he won his first race, but he became one of the country’s greatest athletes two years later when he became the first Spanish World Champion.
He was quite simply unstoppable in 2005, taking seven wins and only failing to finish on the podium in two of the races that he didn’t retire from. When he was crowned champion, he was the sport’s youngest ever and Spain’s first, adding his country to the list of those to win titles.
No driver has managed to do the same since, and he’s the only one to so in the 21st century, with the last before him being Jacques Villeneuve in 1997.
He knew how to push Ron Dennis’s buttons
After winning another title in 2006, he headed to McLaren for the 2007 campaign, where he didn’t enjoy the best of relationships with team boss Ron Dennis, to say the least, feeling that he favoured team-mate, Lewis Hamilton. While the Spaniard tried to let his driving do the talking, he had a few tricks up his sleeve away from the track too.
According to Matt Bishop, the team’s head of communications at the time, Dennis was “OCD” about cleanliness and “absolutely loathed” people eating juicy fruits without a knife and fork. Being well aware of this, Alonso found a new favourite snack to take to meetings…
“Fernando arrived with, I think, the largest and ripest peach I have ever seen, and he just sat next to Ron [slurping] like that and letting all the juice run down into his beard and leaving the bits of fruit pulp in his beard,” Bishop remembered.
Ultimately, the relationship deteriorated beyond repair and Alonso left the team after just one season. Perhaps it was the peach that pushed things over the edge…
Mark Webber and he were close friends
While Alonso didn’t get on well with Dennis, he did have some friends in the paddock. Somewhat rarely in the world of F1, one of them was a fellow driver.
After the pair both joined F1 in the early 2000s, he and Webber went head to head many a time over the years, even fighting for the title in 2010, but somehow also managed to maintain a friendship.
Their close relationship was evident many times. For example, Webber gave Alonso a lift at the end of the 2011 German Grand Prix and the Spaniard returned the favour in Singapore two years later. During that season, the two also went for dinner together, which caused quite a stir, with some Sebastian Vettel fans not too happy about it.
In fact, they got on so well that Alonso pushed for Ferrari to bring Webber in as a team-mate towards the end of the Aussie’s career. Looking at what happened to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s friendship when they were at the same team, it’s probably a good thing that a deal was never agreed…
He *really* loves cycling
One thing Alonso and Webber had in common and bonded over was their love of cycling, and in recent times, the Spaniard’s passion for it has been more talked about than even following his pre-season accident.
Like Webber back in 2008, he was hit by a car while out training ahead of his return to the grid, much to the annoyance of his manager Flavio Briatore, who has threatened to lock him in a garage if he doesn’t stop cycling.
His love for the sport extends far beyond just riding bikes too, with him intent on running his own team. He almost did so by buying an existing outfit in 2013, but a deal couldn’t be reached.
In 2015 he went a step further and created his own from scratch, but the financial backers ended up pulling out and supported someone else.
He’s a massive Real Madrid fan, and member
⚽🤝🏎 ¡@alo_oficial, honorary member of #RealMadrid!
Alonso: "I am another member of this great club." 👇
READ: https://t.co/7izo9VCbHi pic.twitter.com/72Cvn3ZBRy
— Real Madrid C.F. (@realmadriden) September 4, 2017
Cycling isn’t the only sport outside of F1 that Alonso has a passion for, with him also being a big football fan. Specifically, he’s a Madridista. His love for Los Blancos is so strong in fact that in 2017, he signed for the club. Sort of.
The two-time World Champion was made an honorary member of the club with a special presentation being made at the Santiago Bernabeu to announce it, akin to one for new signings. He even took the traditional photo of himself holding a shirt with club President Florentino Perez.
“It is a tremendously special day to be here in this stadium that I love from a distance with all the trips I have,” he said.
“I’ve been asked a lot why I support Real Madrid. I’ve never had a clear answer. I am a Real Madrid fan because I am a Real Madrid fan. Neither do I know why my eyes are brown.
“Real Madrid chose me to be, like millions of people, a fan of this great club.”
There’s a Fernando Alonso museum, and he thinks it’s too small
You know someone has been successful when there’s an entire museum all about them. You know they’ve been *really* successful when said museum needs expanding.
The Museo y Circuito Fernando Alonso was opened in 2015 and contains over 300 items from Alonso’s racing career, including an array of his cars, helmets and trophies, as well as a karting circuit he designed himself.
With him about to return to F1, he decided at the start of 2021 that there wasn’t enough space in it and thus apparently provided around £2million for it to be expanded.
Clearly, he’s expecting big things from the next few years…
11 points more would have made him a five-time champion
If he thinks the museum is too small now, we can’t imagine how big it would have needed to be if he won five rather than two titles, which could have so easily been the case.
Alonso missed out on World Championships by the narrowest of margins on three occasions, falling short at the final race in 2007, 2010 and 2012.
In the first of those years, he needed two points more to beat Kimi Raikkonen to the title; in his first season with Ferrari, he finished just four points behind Vettel, while two years later, the German beat him by three.
Each of those years, finishing one place higher at one race would have earned him another World Championship, and he could so easily be sitting on five today. So close, yet so far…
He’s one of only five F1 champions to win Le Mans
On a brighter note, while 10 drivers have won more F1 titles than him, only four of them have also won the iconic Le Mans 24 Hours too.
Growing tired of being a backmarker at McLaren, Alonso decided to try his hand at endurance racing with Toyota in 2018 and took to it like a duck to water, winning the race on his first try.
With that triumph, he joined an elite group of drivers consisting of Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Jochen Rindt and Mike Hawthorn to have won both that and the F1 title.
Winning Le Mans was part of Alonso’s effort to become just the second F1 driver, after Graham Hill, to claim the Triple Crown by winning Le Mans, the Monaco Grand and the Indy 500. Even if he fails to triumph in the latter though, two out of three ain’t bad.
He’s only been out-scored by a team-mate once
Esteban Ocon fans, look away now…
Remarkably, in his 18 seasons as an F1 driver, Alonso has only scored fewer points than the man across the garage from him on one occasion.
That occasion came in 2015, when Jenson Button scored 16 points, four more than Alonso, in what was a poor year for McLaren. It should be noted though that Alonso missed the first race of the season and retired twice more than the Brit.
Asides from that, Alonso has either matched or surpassed his team-mate’s points tally. In 2007, he scored the same amount as Hamilton; in 2001, he and Tarso Marques both scored none; in every other campaign, he prevailed.
It’s a record that shows just how well he has driven, even if poor equipment has prevented him from getting the results he deserves, and it would take a brave man to bet against him maintaining it in 2021…
10 of the best facts about Fernando Alonso
Date published: February 27 2021
Ahead of Fernando Alonso’s highly anticipated return to the grid, refresh your knowledge of the Spaniard with these 10 facts…
He was racing before he could count to 10, probably
Every driver who made it to Formula 1 got their careers started at a young age, but few would have been quite as young as Alonso was.
His older sister, Lorena, had little interest in the go-kart that their father had built her, but a three-year-old Fernando immediately fell in love with it. The pedals were adjusted for him, and his life as a racing driver began.
He spent the following four years driving it whenever he could before competing in his first race at the age of seven. Despite being the youngest driver, he won, and that would prove to be the case many times as he made his way through the ranks.
He’s the only Spanish F1 driver to win a race
Before Alonso came along, Spain hadn’t achieved a huge amount in F1. 11 countrymen had been on the grid over the years, but none had managed to claim a victory, and only once had one finished on the podium, in 1956.
El Nano began to change all that in just his second season on the grid. Driving for Renault, he crossed the line in the top three in three of the opening fives races before taking his and Spain’s maiden win in Hungary. And that was just the start of it.
Since then, he has gone to taste victory 31 more times – three on home turf – and single-handedly make F1 one of his nation’s most popular sports.
He’s the last driver to win his country its first World Championship
He cemented himself as Spain’s best F1 driver ever when he won his first race, but he became one of the country’s greatest athletes two years later when he became the first Spanish World Champion.
He was quite simply unstoppable in 2005, taking seven wins and only failing to finish on the podium in two of the races that he didn’t retire from. When he was crowned champion, he was the sport’s youngest ever and Spain’s first, adding his country to the list of those to win titles.
No driver has managed to do the same since, and he’s the only one to so in the 21st century, with the last before him being Jacques Villeneuve in 1997.
He knew how to push Ron Dennis’s buttons
After winning another title in 2006, he headed to McLaren for the 2007 campaign, where he didn’t enjoy the best of relationships with team boss Ron Dennis, to say the least, feeling that he favoured team-mate, Lewis Hamilton. While the Spaniard tried to let his driving do the talking, he had a few tricks up his sleeve away from the track too.
According to Matt Bishop, the team’s head of communications at the time, Dennis was “OCD” about cleanliness and “absolutely loathed” people eating juicy fruits without a knife and fork. Being well aware of this, Alonso found a new favourite snack to take to meetings…
“Fernando arrived with, I think, the largest and ripest peach I have ever seen, and he just sat next to Ron [slurping] like that and letting all the juice run down into his beard and leaving the bits of fruit pulp in his beard,” Bishop remembered.
Ultimately, the relationship deteriorated beyond repair and Alonso left the team after just one season. Perhaps it was the peach that pushed things over the edge…
Mark Webber and he were close friends
While Alonso didn’t get on well with Dennis, he did have some friends in the paddock. Somewhat rarely in the world of F1, one of them was a fellow driver.
After the pair both joined F1 in the early 2000s, he and Webber went head to head many a time over the years, even fighting for the title in 2010, but somehow also managed to maintain a friendship.
Their close relationship was evident many times. For example, Webber gave Alonso a lift at the end of the 2011 German Grand Prix and the Spaniard returned the favour in Singapore two years later. During that season, the two also went for dinner together, which caused quite a stir, with some Sebastian Vettel fans not too happy about it.
In fact, they got on so well that Alonso pushed for Ferrari to bring Webber in as a team-mate towards the end of the Aussie’s career. Looking at what happened to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s friendship when they were at the same team, it’s probably a good thing that a deal was never agreed…
He *really* loves cycling
One thing Alonso and Webber had in common and bonded over was their love of cycling, and in recent times, the Spaniard’s passion for it has been more talked about than even following his pre-season accident.
Like Webber back in 2008, he was hit by a car while out training ahead of his return to the grid, much to the annoyance of his manager Flavio Briatore, who has threatened to lock him in a garage if he doesn’t stop cycling.
His love for the sport extends far beyond just riding bikes too, with him intent on running his own team. He almost did so by buying an existing outfit in 2013, but a deal couldn’t be reached.
In 2015 he went a step further and created his own from scratch, but the financial backers ended up pulling out and supported someone else.
He’s a massive Real Madrid fan, and member
⚽🤝🏎 ¡@alo_oficial, honorary member of #RealMadrid!
Alonso: "I am another member of this great club." 👇
READ: https://t.co/7izo9VCbHi pic.twitter.com/72Cvn3ZBRy
— Real Madrid C.F. (@realmadriden) September 4, 2017
Cycling isn’t the only sport outside of F1 that Alonso has a passion for, with him also being a big football fan. Specifically, he’s a Madridista. His love for Los Blancos is so strong in fact that in 2017, he signed for the club. Sort of.
The two-time World Champion was made an honorary member of the club with a special presentation being made at the Santiago Bernabeu to announce it, akin to one for new signings. He even took the traditional photo of himself holding a shirt with club President Florentino Perez.
“It is a tremendously special day to be here in this stadium that I love from a distance with all the trips I have,” he said.
“I’ve been asked a lot why I support Real Madrid. I’ve never had a clear answer. I am a Real Madrid fan because I am a Real Madrid fan. Neither do I know why my eyes are brown.
“Real Madrid chose me to be, like millions of people, a fan of this great club.”
There’s a Fernando Alonso museum, and he thinks it’s too small
You know someone has been successful when there’s an entire museum all about them. You know they’ve been *really* successful when said museum needs expanding.
The Museo y Circuito Fernando Alonso was opened in 2015 and contains over 300 items from Alonso’s racing career, including an array of his cars, helmets and trophies, as well as a karting circuit he designed himself.
With him about to return to F1, he decided at the start of 2021 that there wasn’t enough space in it and thus apparently provided around £2million for it to be expanded.
Clearly, he’s expecting big things from the next few years…
11 points more would have made him a five-time champion
If he thinks the museum is too small now, we can’t imagine how big it would have needed to be if he won five rather than two titles, which could have so easily been the case.
Alonso missed out on World Championships by the narrowest of margins on three occasions, falling short at the final race in 2007, 2010 and 2012.
In the first of those years, he needed two points more to beat Kimi Raikkonen to the title; in his first season with Ferrari, he finished just four points behind Vettel, while two years later, the German beat him by three.
Each of those years, finishing one place higher at one race would have earned him another World Championship, and he could so easily be sitting on five today. So close, yet so far…
He’s one of only five F1 champions to win Le Mans
On a brighter note, while 10 drivers have won more F1 titles than him, only four of them have also won the iconic Le Mans 24 Hours too.
Growing tired of being a backmarker at McLaren, Alonso decided to try his hand at endurance racing with Toyota in 2018 and took to it like a duck to water, winning the race on his first try.
With that triumph, he joined an elite group of drivers consisting of Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Jochen Rindt and Mike Hawthorn to have won both that and the F1 title.
Winning Le Mans was part of Alonso’s effort to become just the second F1 driver, after Graham Hill, to claim the Triple Crown by winning Le Mans, the Monaco Grand and the Indy 500. Even if he fails to triumph in the latter though, two out of three ain’t bad.
He’s only been out-scored by a team-mate once
Esteban Ocon fans, look away now…
Remarkably, in his 18 seasons as an F1 driver, Alonso has only scored fewer points than the man across the garage from him on one occasion.
That occasion came in 2015, when Jenson Button scored 16 points, four more than Alonso, in what was a poor year for McLaren. It should be noted though that Alonso missed the first race of the season and retired twice more than the Brit.
Asides from that, Alonso has either matched or surpassed his team-mate’s points tally. In 2007, he scored the same amount as Hamilton; in 2001, he and Tarso Marques both scored none; in every other campaign, he prevailed.
It’s a record that shows just how well he has driven, even if poor equipment has prevented him from getting the results he deserves, and it would take a brave man to bet against him maintaining it in 2021…
The mantra Ocon must follow to challenge Alonso
OPINION: It's been an uneasy ride for Esteban Ocon since his F1 comeback - and fresh challenges lie in wait as he's joined by double world champion Fernando Alonso in the newly rebranded Alpine team. STUART CODLING sets out a roadmap to success
"Starting strong is good. Finishing strong is epic." An aphorism which sounds as if it might have tripped from the tongue of an author of self-help manuals (it has: Robin Sharma, no less), but is no less astutely observed for being so. For Esteban Ocon it's a mantra to live by as he seeks to preserve the momentum of the season just passed, one in which he built from shaky foundations to a feisty maiden podium finish in the penultimate round.
Twelve months ago, the prevailing expectation was that the line-up of Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo at Renault was potentially the spiciest on the grid, given each had a history of on-track rancour with team-mates.
Ricciardo went to Renault after feeling the Red Bull love tilt inexorably in the direction of Max Verstappen, even after the clash between the two in Baku in 2018. At Racing Point, Ocon and Sergio Perez had formed possibly the least cuddly partnership since Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya at Williams in the mid-2000s - to the extent of being threatened with sanctions by the team if they carried on colliding. Ocon's nationality also offered the tantalising possibility of favouritism within the proudly French-flagged Renault organisation.
These expectations fizzled out over the course of a 2020 season in which Ricciardo generally showed Ocon his rear wing in qualifying and during races - and on the occasions when they were fighting for the same stretch of asphalt, it was generally as a consequence of split strategies which resulted in team orders for Ocon to move over.
It wasn't quite the rollocking comeback Ocon might have been hoping for and it illuminates the difficulty in squeezing the final few tenths from an F1 car. These are margins you find not through bravura and natural talent but by sifting through data and teasing out fragments of useful information.
"I think the biggest challenge has been to get back up to speed - and quickly," Ocon says. "You can kind of get back up to speed, but the last details take longer. What's been difficult in this past season is that we were going through three races, then just one week of a break, and then three races again. So, we had a limited amount of time to analyse and come back stronger for the next one compared with a normal season.
"But our progression has been good, I would say, and we're pretty pleased with that. Where I'm coming from is that we ended the year a lot stronger than at the beginning, and this is what we have to take on board for next season and start from there, from the much higher level. Obviously, Daniel [Ricciardo] stepped up from his first year at Renault to his second year and I'm looking to do the same."
"Because of travel restrictions, quarantine rules and so on, I probably spent 50% less time at the factory, on the sim, than I otherwise would"Esteban Ocon
In an interview with GP Racing last year Lando Norris spoke of how he'd used the enforced downtime of the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, analysing nuances of the data from the preceding season. This was a luxury Ocon didn't have, since he'd spent 2019 as Mercedes' reserve and therefore had no grands prix to review forensically in that way. There was also the matter of having to establish relationships in a different team, with a second-year driver alongside, and with the additional impediment of new social-distancing and mask-wearing protocols.
"It has been a very tough season in that we couldn't go as much as we wanted to the factory to analyse, to do simulator correlation and preparation for races," Ocon says. "Because of travel restrictions, quarantine rules and so on, I probably spent 50% less time at the factory, on the sim, than I otherwise would.
"So that's not been a great help but it's not an excuse, because everyone has the same situation. In the end I found my way around and I've been a lot more comfortable recently than I was at the beginning of last season.
"Being out for a year, and then coming back into a new team is not an easy thing... What I've learned from this last year is crucial - working in a different way from what I did with my previous teams and finding the right words."
Key relationships such as those between the driver and their engineer, as well as between the driver and the rest of the trackside personnel, naturally take time to bed in. In the early races of last season, it became apparent the machinery wasn't running as smoothly as it might, as Ocon qualified an average of two tenths behind Ricciardo and failed more often to make it to Q3, limiting his strategic choices.
In first half of the Styrian GP - where Ocon outqualified Ricciardo for the first of just two occasions all season - there was a curious phase in which Ocon fought to defend sixth from Ricciardo, even though he was on degrading soft-compound tyres while his team-mate was pushing hard on mediums with plenty of life left.
In the absence of team orders Ricciardo had to push his way through on lap 19 - arguably about four laps too late since fifth-placed Carlos Sainz was pulling away. Ocon retired six laps later when a radiator weld failed. Ricciardo said he believed team orders "were coming", but the delay was suggestive: was it a pitwall dither over potential strategic outcomes? Or were they unsure of Ocon's response to orders, given previous form?
While the gap between the Renault drivers in qualifying over the first half of 2020 was relatively small, it tended to have a disproportionate effect on outcomes because Ricciardo made it into Q3 regularly and Ocon didn't. This generally consigned Ocon to offset strategies requiring him to start on harder tyres in the hope of gaining track position as those immediately ahead on softer rubber pitted.
As a consequence, there came several moments in which Ricciardo had to pass his team-mate while Ocon was beginning to struggle for grip on ageing rubber, adding to the impression that the Australian had the upper hand.
In what became a season of two halves, Ocon reduced his average pace deficit in qualifying to a tenth of a second. If there was a turning point, we might pin it down to the Italian GP weekend, where frustrations boiled to the surface.
During the red-flag period which defined the outcome of the race, Ocon ultimately chose used softs rather than new hards in order to be stronger at the restart, though the radio conversation between him and veteran engineer Mark Slade (who engineered Mika Hakkinen to two world championships at McLaren and latterly worked with Kimi Raikkonen at both McLaren and 'Team Enstone') revealed some initial uncertainty over how many laps the used tyres had done. Ocon then distracted himself by enquiring about what Ricciardo was doing and quibbling about how many positions he had lost as a result of Renault double-stacking its drivers in the pits under the Safety Car before the red flag.
Informed that Ricciardo would take the restart on mediums, Ocon described that as "the right choice" - but the only mediums available to him were a used set which hadn't been in tyre blankets and were too cold to use. Ocon duly flew at the restart, only to fade over the final laps, though his eighth place was a net gain from 12th on the grid. A rebarbative exchange then followed over the radio on the slowing-down lap as Ocon railed against the tyre choice, only to be instructed by Slade and team principal Cyril Abiteboul to keep his thoughts off an open channel.
Whatever happened behind closed doors afterwards, from this point onwards Ocon began to find more speed during qualifying, which gave him a platform to perform better over the second half of the season. At Mugello he raced strongly before being eliminated by brake failure and then, in Portugal, an outlier race where starting on a harder tyre compound paid dividends to those who could make them last, he completed 53 laps on mediums to finish eighth - ahead of Ricciardo, who had started one place in front.
Ironically, perhaps, it was Ocon's final failure of the season to reach Q3 which set him on the path to his best result, second place in the Sakhir Grand Prix. Once again he executed a long first stint on harder rubber with aplomb, which delivered him track position before the Safety Car prompted by Jack Aitken's late-race shunt. Running fourth at the onset of that, Ocon gained two places from Mercedes' disarray and, though never a serious threat to new race leader Sergio Perez, Ocon had the other Racing Point of Lance Stroll well under control.
"I think the understanding with my side of the garage was a lot stronger by the end of the year," reflects Ocon. "And we found a much better way of building the weekend, getting the car to where I wanted it to be. Early in the year I was probably giving directions which were not the optimum for the car I had, and the understanding was not fantastic between me and the garage. We're doing this a lot better now, everything is properly understood and we are a lot stronger all together."
Now Ocon faces the looming presence in the garage next door of Fernando Alonso, undoubtedly one of F1's big beasts even if he is returning after two seasons competing elsewhere, and is now nearing his 40th birthday. Alonso brings baggage not only historical - in the form of his two world championships and well-established reputation as a tantrum-prone disruptor - but also current, in that he has been hired as the figurehead of a team with ambitions and a recently installed signer of cheques (Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault since July 2020).
Ocon has raced against Alonso in F1, during McLaren's midfield toils in 2017 and 2018, and describes him as "tough but fair". Ocon has yet to experience the intensity Alonso brings to off-track operations. Asked what his expectations are of working with Alonso, Ocon is diplomatic: "I have a great relationship with Fernando and a lot of respect for him as well. I get on well with him, so there's no issues there at all."
But with expectations from above to be met, and a hyper-competitive animal for a new team-mate, Ocon is going to have to start and finish strong if he wishes his 2021 season to be truly epic for the right reasons...
https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/11061/the-mantra-ocon-must-follow-to-challenge-alonso
The mantra Ocon must follow to challenge Alonso
OPINION: It's been an uneasy ride for Esteban Ocon since his F1 comeback - and fresh challenges lie in wait as he's joined by double world champion Fernando Alonso in the newly rebranded Alpine team. STUART CODLING sets out a roadmap to success
"Starting strong is good. Finishing strong is epic." An aphorism which sounds as if it might have tripped from the tongue of an author of self-help manuals (it has: Robin Sharma, no less), but is no less astutely observed for being so. For Esteban Ocon it's a mantra to live by as he seeks to preserve the momentum of the season just passed, one in which he built from shaky foundations to a feisty maiden podium finish in the penultimate round.
Twelve months ago, the prevailing expectation was that the line-up of Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo at Renault was potentially the spiciest on the grid, given each had a history of on-track rancour with team-mates.
Ricciardo went to Renault after feeling the Red Bull love tilt inexorably in the direction of Max Verstappen, even after the clash between the two in Baku in 2018. At Racing Point, Ocon and Sergio Perez had formed possibly the least cuddly partnership since Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya at Williams in the mid-2000s - to the extent of being threatened with sanctions by the team if they carried on colliding. Ocon's nationality also offered the tantalising possibility of favouritism within the proudly French-flagged Renault organisation.
These expectations fizzled out over the course of a 2020 season in which Ricciardo generally showed Ocon his rear wing in qualifying and during races - and on the occasions when they were fighting for the same stretch of asphalt, it was generally as a consequence of split strategies which resulted in team orders for Ocon to move over.
It wasn't quite the rollocking comeback Ocon might have been hoping for and it illuminates the difficulty in squeezing the final few tenths from an F1 car. These are margins you find not through bravura and natural talent but by sifting through data and teasing out fragments of useful information.
"I think the biggest challenge has been to get back up to speed - and quickly," Ocon says. "You can kind of get back up to speed, but the last details take longer. What's been difficult in this past season is that we were going through three races, then just one week of a break, and then three races again. So, we had a limited amount of time to analyse and come back stronger for the next one compared with a normal season.
"But our progression has been good, I would say, and we're pretty pleased with that. Where I'm coming from is that we ended the year a lot stronger than at the beginning, and this is what we have to take on board for next season and start from there, from the much higher level. Obviously, Daniel [Ricciardo] stepped up from his first year at Renault to his second year and I'm looking to do the same."
"Because of travel restrictions, quarantine rules and so on, I probably spent 50% less time at the factory, on the sim, than I otherwise would"Esteban Ocon
In an interview with GP Racing last year Lando Norris spoke of how he'd used the enforced downtime of the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, analysing nuances of the data from the preceding season. This was a luxury Ocon didn't have, since he'd spent 2019 as Mercedes' reserve and therefore had no grands prix to review forensically in that way. There was also the matter of having to establish relationships in a different team, with a second-year driver alongside, and with the additional impediment of new social-distancing and mask-wearing protocols.
"It has been a very tough season in that we couldn't go as much as we wanted to the factory to analyse, to do simulator correlation and preparation for races," Ocon says. "Because of travel restrictions, quarantine rules and so on, I probably spent 50% less time at the factory, on the sim, than I otherwise would.
"So that's not been a great help but it's not an excuse, because everyone has the same situation. In the end I found my way around and I've been a lot more comfortable recently than I was at the beginning of last season.
"Being out for a year, and then coming back into a new team is not an easy thing... What I've learned from this last year is crucial - working in a different way from what I did with my previous teams and finding the right words."
Key relationships such as those between the driver and their engineer, as well as between the driver and the rest of the trackside personnel, naturally take time to bed in. In the early races of last season, it became apparent the machinery wasn't running as smoothly as it might, as Ocon qualified an average of two tenths behind Ricciardo and failed more often to make it to Q3, limiting his strategic choices.
In first half of the Styrian GP - where Ocon outqualified Ricciardo for the first of just two occasions all season - there was a curious phase in which Ocon fought to defend sixth from Ricciardo, even though he was on degrading soft-compound tyres while his team-mate was pushing hard on mediums with plenty of life left.
In the absence of team orders Ricciardo had to push his way through on lap 19 - arguably about four laps too late since fifth-placed Carlos Sainz was pulling away. Ocon retired six laps later when a radiator weld failed. Ricciardo said he believed team orders "were coming", but the delay was suggestive: was it a pitwall dither over potential strategic outcomes? Or were they unsure of Ocon's response to orders, given previous form?
While the gap between the Renault drivers in qualifying over the first half of 2020 was relatively small, it tended to have a disproportionate effect on outcomes because Ricciardo made it into Q3 regularly and Ocon didn't. This generally consigned Ocon to offset strategies requiring him to start on harder tyres in the hope of gaining track position as those immediately ahead on softer rubber pitted.
As a consequence, there came several moments in which Ricciardo had to pass his team-mate while Ocon was beginning to struggle for grip on ageing rubber, adding to the impression that the Australian had the upper hand.
In what became a season of two halves, Ocon reduced his average pace deficit in qualifying to a tenth of a second. If there was a turning point, we might pin it down to the Italian GP weekend, where frustrations boiled to the surface.
During the red-flag period which defined the outcome of the race, Ocon ultimately chose used softs rather than new hards in order to be stronger at the restart, though the radio conversation between him and veteran engineer Mark Slade (who engineered Mika Hakkinen to two world championships at McLaren and latterly worked with Kimi Raikkonen at both McLaren and 'Team Enstone') revealed some initial uncertainty over how many laps the used tyres had done. Ocon then distracted himself by enquiring about what Ricciardo was doing and quibbling about how many positions he had lost as a result of Renault double-stacking its drivers in the pits under the Safety Car before the red flag.
Informed that Ricciardo would take the restart on mediums, Ocon described that as "the right choice" - but the only mediums available to him were a used set which hadn't been in tyre blankets and were too cold to use. Ocon duly flew at the restart, only to fade over the final laps, though his eighth place was a net gain from 12th on the grid. A rebarbative exchange then followed over the radio on the slowing-down lap as Ocon railed against the tyre choice, only to be instructed by Slade and team principal Cyril Abiteboul to keep his thoughts off an open channel.
Whatever happened behind closed doors afterwards, from this point onwards Ocon began to find more speed during qualifying, which gave him a platform to perform better over the second half of the season. At Mugello he raced strongly before being eliminated by brake failure and then, in Portugal, an outlier race where starting on a harder tyre compound paid dividends to those who could make them last, he completed 53 laps on mediums to finish eighth - ahead of Ricciardo, who had started one place in front.
Ironically, perhaps, it was Ocon's final failure of the season to reach Q3 which set him on the path to his best result, second place in the Sakhir Grand Prix. Once again he executed a long first stint on harder rubber with aplomb, which delivered him track position before the Safety Car prompted by Jack Aitken's late-race shunt. Running fourth at the onset of that, Ocon gained two places from Mercedes' disarray and, though never a serious threat to new race leader Sergio Perez, Ocon had the other Racing Point of Lance Stroll well under control.
"I think the understanding with my side of the garage was a lot stronger by the end of the year," reflects Ocon. "And we found a much better way of building the weekend, getting the car to where I wanted it to be. Early in the year I was probably giving directions which were not the optimum for the car I had, and the understanding was not fantastic between me and the garage. We're doing this a lot better now, everything is properly understood and we are a lot stronger all together."
Now Ocon faces the looming presence in the garage next door of Fernando Alonso, undoubtedly one of F1's big beasts even if he is returning after two seasons competing elsewhere, and is now nearing his 40th birthday. Alonso brings baggage not only historical - in the form of his two world championships and well-established reputation as a tantrum-prone disruptor - but also current, in that he has been hired as the figurehead of a team with ambitions and a recently installed signer of cheques (Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault since July 2020).
Ocon has raced against Alonso in F1, during McLaren's midfield toils in 2017 and 2018, and describes him as "tough but fair". Ocon has yet to experience the intensity Alonso brings to off-track operations. Asked what his expectations are of working with Alonso, Ocon is diplomatic: "I have a great relationship with Fernando and a lot of respect for him as well. I get on well with him, so there's no issues there at all."
But with expectations from above to be met, and a hyper-competitive animal for a new team-mate, Ocon is going to have to start and finish strong if he wishes his 2021 season to be truly epic for the right reasons...
https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/11061/the-mantra-ocon-must-follow-to-challenge-alonso
2021-03-01
And while our friend @alo_oficial can’t physically be with us, rest assured he is paying close attention!
See you soon Fernando #A521Launch pic.twitter.com/kCvzaRNjqL
— Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) March 1, 2021
“Hello everybody! As you know, I won’t be able to be present at the team presentation in the UK on Tuesday. ” Alonso explains in a video posted on social networks.
“It’s a bit difficult to travel between Switzerland and the UK with the covid restrictions but of course I’ll follow it virtually like everyone else, it’s not a big deal if you’re not there physically.
“I can’t wait to present the car, the new colours, the new combinations, I’m very excited. I look forward to seeing you soon! ”
2021-03-01
And while our friend @alo_oficial can’t physically be with us, rest assured he is paying close attention!
See you soon Fernando #A521Launch pic.twitter.com/kCvzaRNjqL
— Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) March 1, 2021
“Hello everybody! As you know, I won’t be able to be present at the team presentation in the UK on Tuesday. ” Alonso explains in a video posted on social networks.
“It’s a bit difficult to travel between Switzerland and the UK with the covid restrictions but of course I’ll follow it virtually like everyone else, it’s not a big deal if you’re not there physically.
“I can’t wait to present the car, the new colours, the new combinations, I’m very excited. I look forward to seeing you soon! ”
2021-03-02
ALONSO’S ARRIVING INTO A TEAM FULL OF AMBIGUITY AND UNCERTAINTY
By Mark Hughes
New name, new livery, new management, the return of a legend behind the wheel.
But the challenge remains as before for the now-Alpine-badged Enstone Formula 1 team as it launches its 2021 car today: how to smash through the apparent glass ceiling of that midfield pack.
Laying down the foundations for that to happen are taking longer than the previous team boss Cyril Abiteboul envisioned.
There has been a basic incompatibility between the amount of resource the automotive parent company Renault wishes to allocate to an F1 project and the level of success realistically achievable within that budget. That has brought tensions and pressures to even this most robust team of seasoned campaigners.
The failure of the 2019 technical management to make the performance advances expected after a heavy technical investment led to their departure at the end of that season.
Their replacements – namely Pat Fry and Dirk de Beer – joined too late to be able to impart much of an influence on the 2020 car, which was actually a better car than its predecessor and scored three podiums.
The team has been on a steady improvement curve since Renault repurchased it in 2016, when its car (pictured above) was 2.8s off the pace. In each subsequent year since, that deficit has reduced: to 1.8s, 1.7s, 1.4s and – last year – 1.2s.
The fact that the dismissed team leaders had, before they left, pulled together an improved car just underlines the value of stability. That’s a quality which seems somewhat elusive at the moment in the wake of major management changes.
This has cascaded down from enforced management changes in the parent company triggered a couple of years ago by Carlos Ghosn’s unexpected departure.
Since Luca de Meo took up the CEO position a few months ago he has taken a very keen interest in the F1 programme and, not unnaturally, wants to stamp his own mark on it.
As such he recruited Davide Brivio from MotoGP to run the team in the expectation that Abiteboul would accept a management job overseeing the whole Alpine brand.
Instead, Abiteboul quit – and there has been something of a hurried reshuffling of responsibilities in the wake of that. Quite how the incumbent executive director Marcin Budkowski and Brivio split their responsibilities is not yet clear – and this sets a tenor for the whole team.
Ambiguity and uncertainty is rarely a good preparation for a racing team and the hope is that this can all be settled quickly.
Into this mix insert the returning, hugely ambitious Fernando Alonso, recruited by Abiteboul as the departing Daniel Ricciardo’s replacement. Someone who will be blunt about any shortcomings.
Any driver pushing 40 years old and returning to F1 after two years away must face questions about his prospects. But this is Alonso. Remarkable is the norm for him.
There looked little missing from his skills last year in Abu Dhabi where after lapping the old 2005 V10 car at speeds only a couple of seconds off the back of the current grid, he proceeded in the ‘young driver’ test to lap the RS20 faster than it had been qualified by its regular drivers a few days earlier.
But the ultimate barometer of his performance will be that of team-mate Esteban Ocon, a driver who in career terms badly needs to bounce back strongly from having been dominated by Ricciardo last year. There is definitely potential for tension in that line-up.
On the positive side, there is a respectable base to build upon. At its best, in the second half of the season, last year’s Renault was capable of podiums.
It tended to run sweeter on low-downforce tracks, suggesting there may have been some un-simulated aerodynamic issues when run in higher downforce trim.
If the team now has a fuller understanding of that and if the Viry engine facility – now only supplying Alpine following McLaren’s return to Mercedes – can again provide a decently competitive power unit, there’s no physical reason why that deficit to the front can’t narrow further.
But Alpine is up against some likely very hot competition in this part of the grid in the shape of Aston Martin, Ferrari and McLaren.
To keep that momentum going and to keep Alonso happy may require some very strong leadership.
https://the-race.com/formula-1/alonsos-arriving-into-a-team-full-of-ambiguity-and-uncertainty/
2021-03-02
ALONSO’S ARRIVING INTO A TEAM FULL OF AMBIGUITY AND UNCERTAINTY
By Mark Hughes
New name, new livery, new management, the return of a legend behind the wheel.
But the challenge remains as before for the now-Alpine-badged Enstone Formula 1 team as it launches its 2021 car today: how to smash through the apparent glass ceiling of that midfield pack.
Laying down the foundations for that to happen are taking longer than the previous team boss Cyril Abiteboul envisioned.
There has been a basic incompatibility between the amount of resource the automotive parent company Renault wishes to allocate to an F1 project and the level of success realistically achievable within that budget. That has brought tensions and pressures to even this most robust team of seasoned campaigners.
The failure of the 2019 technical management to make the performance advances expected after a heavy technical investment led to their departure at the end of that season.
Their replacements – namely Pat Fry and Dirk de Beer – joined too late to be able to impart much of an influence on the 2020 car, which was actually a better car than its predecessor and scored three podiums.
The team has been on a steady improvement curve since Renault repurchased it in 2016, when its car (pictured above) was 2.8s off the pace. In each subsequent year since, that deficit has reduced: to 1.8s, 1.7s, 1.4s and – last year – 1.2s.
The fact that the dismissed team leaders had, before they left, pulled together an improved car just underlines the value of stability. That’s a quality which seems somewhat elusive at the moment in the wake of major management changes.
This has cascaded down from enforced management changes in the parent company triggered a couple of years ago by Carlos Ghosn’s unexpected departure.
Since Luca de Meo took up the CEO position a few months ago he has taken a very keen interest in the F1 programme and, not unnaturally, wants to stamp his own mark on it.
As such he recruited Davide Brivio from MotoGP to run the team in the expectation that Abiteboul would accept a management job overseeing the whole Alpine brand.
Instead, Abiteboul quit – and there has been something of a hurried reshuffling of responsibilities in the wake of that. Quite how the incumbent executive director Marcin Budkowski and Brivio split their responsibilities is not yet clear – and this sets a tenor for the whole team.
Ambiguity and uncertainty is rarely a good preparation for a racing team and the hope is that this can all be settled quickly.
Into this mix insert the returning, hugely ambitious Fernando Alonso, recruited by Abiteboul as the departing Daniel Ricciardo’s replacement. Someone who will be blunt about any shortcomings.
Any driver pushing 40 years old and returning to F1 after two years away must face questions about his prospects. But this is Alonso. Remarkable is the norm for him.
There looked little missing from his skills last year in Abu Dhabi where after lapping the old 2005 V10 car at speeds only a couple of seconds off the back of the current grid, he proceeded in the ‘young driver’ test to lap the RS20 faster than it had been qualified by its regular drivers a few days earlier.
But the ultimate barometer of his performance will be that of team-mate Esteban Ocon, a driver who in career terms badly needs to bounce back strongly from having been dominated by Ricciardo last year. There is definitely potential for tension in that line-up.
On the positive side, there is a respectable base to build upon. At its best, in the second half of the season, last year’s Renault was capable of podiums.
It tended to run sweeter on low-downforce tracks, suggesting there may have been some un-simulated aerodynamic issues when run in higher downforce trim.
If the team now has a fuller understanding of that and if the Viry engine facility – now only supplying Alpine following McLaren’s return to Mercedes – can again provide a decently competitive power unit, there’s no physical reason why that deficit to the front can’t narrow further.
But Alpine is up against some likely very hot competition in this part of the grid in the shape of Aston Martin, Ferrari and McLaren.
To keep that momentum going and to keep Alonso happy may require some very strong leadership.
https://the-race.com/formula-1/alonsos-arriving-into-a-team-full-of-ambiguity-and-uncertainty/
