Top-line Formula One drivers seldom stick around without winning a race for a decade — especially those who were once on the path to statistical greatness. And yet, last Friday marked ten years since Fernando Alonso last won an F1 race: the 2013 Spanish GP.
Back in 2006, when he claimed his second straight world championship, Alonso was seen as the driver most likely to challenge Michael Schumacher’s record of seven titles. After all, he had stopped the German’s five-year winning streak in 2005, becoming the youngest world champion.
But a series of events — some outside his control, some self-inflicted — led to the Spaniard taking a sabbatical after the 2018 season without adding to his world titles before returning in 2021.
It was a strange decision to return at 39, and that too with a midfield team. Alonso found limited success, with just a podium for Alpine in two years.
Unsurprisingly, the team wanted to offer the 41-year-old only a one-year contract. At the same time, a vacancy at Aston Martin opened up following Sebastian Vettel’s retirement.
When Alonso announced he was joining Aston on a multi-year deal, it looked like another questionable career choice. For, this was a team that had finished seventh out of ten constructors in 2022, after starting the season with a flawed car.
A masterstroke
However, five races into 2023, the decision seems to be a masterstroke. Few expected Alonso to be Red Bull’s closest challenger. But he has secured four podiums and is third on the drivers’ standings with 75 points, behind Max Verstappen (119) and Sergio Perez (105).
While Aston has benefitted from Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren dropping the ball, the team has not stood still either. It has produced a car visually similar to the Red Bull, which has dominated the sport since 2022, a sign that the Silverstone-based outfit is on the right path.
Right from pre-season testing in Bahrain, it was evident that Aston had a fast car, and Alonso sometimes struggled to contain his excitement. Who can blame him? Regarded as one of the best drivers of all time, he has not had a competitive car since 2013.
Aston’s leap this year is not just a consequence of following Red Bull’s design philosophy but also a result of the work done over the last four years. Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll led a consortium to take over Force India in 2018, and since then, the team — initially renamed Racing Point — has been on sound financial footing. Having doubled the workforce, Aston is set to move to a new factory building later this month and will have a state-of-the-art wind tunnel next year.
Notably, the team has aggressively poached top technical minds from rivals, including Dan Fallows (Red Bull) and Eric Blandin (Mercedes). The 2023 car is the first Fallows has supervised. It is relatively quick in the corners, showing it is generating good downforce, which also helps reduce tyre wear, and has sufficient traction out of the slow corners.
With the technical structure in place, Aston is set to reap the benefits of its marriage with Alonso. Even though the team had a four-time champion in Vettel, the German driver looked a pale shadow of his dominant self. With Alonso, the team has found a driver who — after two years in the wilderness — is hungry for another shot at an F1 title, however remote the possibility.
One of the 41-year-old’s great strengths is his ability to adapt to any car, muscle it around the track and extract lap-time. With Ferrari in 2012 and 2014 — in cars that were woeful to drive — Alonso conjured up some spectacular performances that teammates Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen struggled to match.
Sublime on race day
He may not be the quickest in qualifying, but on race day, he is sublime. He is a master of positioning his car in the opening moments and is clean and aggressive in wheel-to-wheel battle.
He is also one of those rare drivers with the mental capacity to understand the flow of not just his race but also those of others around him. During the Azerbaijan GP, he even helped teammate Lance Stroll with suggestions to the team on what brake balance to use.
Had a handful of points gone his way during his peak, in 2007, 2010 and 2012, Alonso would have been a five-time champion. Instead, he is seen as a driver whose records don’t reflect his greatness.
He has not helped his cause either by repeatedly falling out with his employers. He has a reputation as someone who stirs up trouble within the team, which has led to title contenders like Red Bull and Mercedes not signing him when they had vacancies.
Alonso has made questionable moves, such as leaving McLaren in 2007 after just one season when he could not get along with team boss Ron Dennis or when he joined the same team in 2015 just as it started to struggle financially and technically.
In 2008, he even had a shot at joining Red Bull — with legendary designer Adrian Newey at the helm — but chose to return to Renault. Vettel duly went on to win four titles from 2010 to 2013 at Red Bull. Even when he joined Ferrari in 2010, it was not the pre-eminent force it had been.
For once, it looks like Alonso has made the right call in what could be the last phase of his career. The 32-time Grand Prix winner is enjoying his most fruitful season in a decade, even though he knows he can’t beat Red Bull on pure pace. But he is doing enough to pick up the pieces — on a day Red Bull falters and he gets a sniff, you can count on him to deliver a win.
Monaco and Barcelona are circuits where Alonso could be in contention — the demand for high downforce at these tracks should suit the Aston’s characteristics.
Although the chances of a third title look slim, Alonso can at least fight at the sharp end of the grid, befitting his stature and talent, rather than trundle along in midfield. For a new generation of ‘Drive to Survive’ fans, it is an opportunity to appreciate Alonso’s skills in a fast car. The sport is certainly richer for it in a season in which the title battle is unlikely to keep the fans hooked.
