At the end of the Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix, the fifth race of the 2023 world championship, the Spanish driver of Aston Martin Fernando Alonso said he was satisfied with having finished third for the fourth time in five Grands Prix: an incredible result in many ways , for him and for the England team he’s a part of. «Obviously we want more, at least a second place», he addedastounding several commentators with its ambitions regarding a championship hitherto dominated by one team, Austria’s Red Bull, in a way rarely seen in Formula 1.
The first five races were all won by either Dutch driver Max Verstappen, who has won three times – including Miami – and is the defending champion, or his Red Bull team-mate, Mexican Sergio Perez. Alonso has always been on the podium with the two of them, except in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, in which he finished fourth. He has 75 points in the standings and is third in the world championship, which he won twice but now a very long time ago: in 2005 and 2006, with Renault. Basically in Miami he never had credible opponents for third place, and finished the race well ahead of the English Mercedes driver George Russell.
The results that Alonso is obtaining can already be considered exceptional and which, in the forecasts of the experts, at this point in the championship other drivers and other more popular teams (Mercedes and Ferrari) should have obtained. And one of the main reasons for amazement regarding his sporting performance is that he has been obtaining them steadily for months now as the least young driver in the championship. He is 41 years old, almost double that of other drivers who don’t seem able to match him in terms of driving ability, lucidity in making choices during races and shrewdness, both on and off the track.
To these qualities Alonso adds a level of experience that is unique in the history of this motoring category: he is the driver who competed multiple seasons in Formula 1 (20), obtained most placements (296) e path more kilometers (over 97 thousand). One of the drivers taking part in this year’s championship, 22-year-old Australian Oscar Piastri, hadn’t even been born yet when in March 2001 Alonso became the third-youngest driver ever to make his Formula 1 debut, with the Italian team Minardi in the Grand Prix of Australia.
A significant part of the merit of Alonso’s current results is certainly linked to the qualities of the car he drives. After a season finished in seventh place and not up to the huge investments made, Aston Martin managed in a short time to develop a successful project explicitly inspired by the principles and forms used by Red Bull. And already during the winter tests it had seemed quite clear that it was the team that had improved the most compared to the previous season.
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It was mainly Alonso who transformed the encouraging data of those pre-season tests into real results on the track in the first races of the championship. The team’s other driver is 24-year-old Lance Stroll, son of Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, Aston Martin’s main investor. Stroll had missed the winter tests due to a hand injury in a bicycle accident, but even without the injury today he would hardly have been able to keep up with his current teammate, as instead he had succeeded to do with his teammate until last season: four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, not exactly the latest addition, who retired at the end of 2022.
Alonso during the Grand Prix in Miami, Florida on May 7, 2023 (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Alonso is considered one of the strongest riders ever: in the very long and articulated list of Formula 1 records, his name appears almost everywhere together with that of other greats of the sport, from Juan Manuel Fangio to Michael Schumacher, passing through Lewis Hamilton. Compared to other admired pilots who have gone down in history for their speed, aggressiveness and recklessness, he rather belongs to the circle of the most farsighted and able to understand in advance the moves of the opponents, obtaining the best possible result according to the means available. Which is also one of the reasons why he has almost always obtained better results than his various colleagues teammates.
Even at Aston Martin, presumably the last or one of the last teams Alonso will race for in Formula 1, his attention always seems to be directed towards the next race and the future development of the car: an admirable and invaluable attitude for designers, engineers and mechanics. of the team, and remarkable at the same time given that it is shown by a 41-year-old driver. At his age, he should have every interest in maximizing as soon as possible – not in two years, say – the results within the team’s reach.
During one of the final stages of the Miami Grand Prix, a radio message from Alonso to the garage was interpreted both as indirect evidence of his relative relaxation, given the absence of rivals for third place, and of his desire to appear interested. to the team’s overall results as well as his own. “What position is Lance in? Nice move in turn 1 », he said, commenting on an overtaking by Stroll that he had managed to see on one of the giant screens on the circuit, outside the track.
Despite his recognized driving skills, focus and race management, Alonso spent most of his Formula 1 career driving cars that weren’t the fastest ever at the time, or at all. Apart from the two seasons in which he won the championship with Renault, and in which he was above all more consistent in his results than his main rivals (Kimi Raikkonen in 2005 and Michael Schumacher in 2006), Alonso fought for the title only three more times: in 2007 with McLaren and in 2010 and 2012 with Ferrari. The other seasons were mostly disappointing or very disappointing, due to the technical limitations of the teams he chose to ride for.
Interviewed on Saturday at the end of qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix, which ended with the second fastest time overall, Alonso answered a question about his recent results compared with those of recent years. AND he said: «I think I’ve always been motivated, I’ve always worked hard, but perhaps I didn’t have a team that believed in my performance, in my ability to find the best set-up for the car and improve its development».
In the twenty years that he has been driving in Formula 1 – skipping just two seasons, after a temporary retirement at the end of 2018 – Alonso has also been subject to criticism. In the past, some Formula 1 experts and enthusiasts have described his desire to excel at any cost as a quality but at the same time as a limitation, sometimes causing clashes within the teams for which he raced. Alonso often harshly criticized his teams, instead of defending them, when things weren’t going well.
It happened sensationally in 2007, when coexistence in McLaren with rookie Lewis Hamilton generated a internal rivalry deleterious for the team and for this reason only lasted one season. But he also happened in part during the experience in Ferrari, which lasted five years and concluded in 2014, when Alonso showed in some stages a certain intolerance for the limits of the team.
Alonso after receiving his third place award at the Grand Prix in Miami, Florida on May 7, 2023 (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
At the moment the chances of a team other than Red Bull winning at least one race are very limited. In practice, it would take a bad weekend for both Verstappen and Perez, ha explained Alonso himself, which is highly unlikely. However, in two of the next three races, the Monaco and Spanish Grands Prix, scheduled for May 28 and June 4, the gap between the Red Bulls and the opposing teams it could be less extensive due to the particular characteristics of the tracks and due to the foreseen introduction of some technical updates to the cars by some teams.