Rare breed Alonso a competitive hope for Melbourne

Fernando Alonso has started the year like a finely aged red wine in the shockingly improved Aston Martin AMR 23, and could cause a genuine Red Bull upset at the Australian Grand Prix.

And like a finely stored bottle of red wine, you know it’s there, you’re just waiting to drink it…and Alpine may well have been Aston Martin’s wine cellar for the past two seasons!

The two-time F1 world champion (2005-2006 with the Mild Seven F1 Renault team) has started the year with two podiums at Sakhir and Jeddah, with the latter marking his 100th F1 podium – the sixth most in F1 history.

Another stat owned by the Spaniard is that at Silverstone in 2022, he became the driver to have covered the largest total distance driven in an F1 car – 92,643 kilometres. Measured around the equator, the circumference of the earth is 40,075 km, meaning Alonso has driven the circumference of the earth 2.3 times and counting in a Formula 1 car.

The now 41 year-old Spaniard took a break from F1 in 2018, the same year he won his first 24 Hours of Le Mans with Toyota Gazoo Racing in an LMP1 TS050 Hybrid.

Alonso soaks up the applause after being in the winning 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans Toyota LMP1 hybrid team

On his return to F1 with Alpine in 2021 he took one podium, which doesn’t sound like a bag of success, but he amassed 162 points over his two years with the French team, as they strived to head up the mid-pack…and they did in 2022.

But before his return via Alpine, he won the World Endurance Championship for Toyota Gazoo Racing in 2018-19, before winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2019, driving a Cadillac DP1-V.R for team Konica Minolta Cadillac.

He then went and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for a second time in the same Toyota hybrid TS050, before competing in another bucket-list event, the Dakar Rally, which he said he wanted to do when he announced his F1 sabbatical.

He finished 13th in a Toyota Hilux Truck at the 2020 Dakar, which he flipped twice and persevered (one of the crashes was fairly hectic coming over a dune), and he then drove on without a windscreen to finish the stage…through the Saudi Arabian desert with no windscreen.

Alonso had a big crash in the Saudi Dunes at the 2020 Dakar Rally, but he somehow continued to finish the stage despite having no windscreen

Also very impressive, is that before the Dakar event, he took a Rally-Raid podium at the Al Ula-Neom Cross-Country Rally in Saudi Arabia the same year, with co-driver Marc Coma.

The two-time F1 world champion sent the drivers market into a spin when he announced he was leaving Alpine in August of 2022.

It started a game of musical chairs which saw Australia’s Oscar Piastri move to McLaren from Alpine to replace compatriot Daniel Ricciardo for the 2023 season, Pierre Gasly’s move from AlphaTauri to Alpine, with Nyck de Vries claiming the vacant AlphaTauri seat.

Alonso said at the same: “It was always a strange feeling and, as I said, I felt like it was the right decision to move to Aston because they seemed to really want me and appreciate every performance I put in in the last few years,” a statement that can be seen as nothing other than a dig at Alpine. 

On the outside and from all claims, Alpine and Otmar Szafnauer just didn’t do enough to make Alonso feel like they desired him despite his consistent point scoring efforts in a mid-pack car.

But also, it felt like he was moving to a team that would not be nearly as competitive, as Aston Martin had been scraping the constructors’ cellar for the last two seasons.

Fernando Alonso leads teammate Lance Stroll during the Bahrain GP. Photo by Mark Sutton / Sutton Images

The contract, which reportedly has a get-out clause and is understood to be worth around $20 million dollars a year (for a 41 year-old driver) would logically seem like a decent reason for him making the switch. But he also said he wanted to be competitive, so it also didn’t add up in one sense.

Alonso himself – who has a consistent history of making bold moves – said himself that it was a gamble, and not many would have predicted the Silverstone based team to be where they currently sit – second in the constructors, and third in the drivers. 

“I don’t even know what to say, because eight months ago the project was just a bet,” Alonso said after Round 1 in Bahrain.

“But now to be race one with a completely new car – which I think we still need to unlock a lot of potential of – to be in the top five fighting with Ferrari, Mercedes, it seems a little bit unreal, but we will take it for sure.”

Two podiums and two qualifying efforts of P3 and P2, as well as topping a few practices, is a pretty good form line heading into Albert Park, and Australian Sport fans like nothing more than an underdog getting up…and somehow, one of the best and most entertaining drivers in F1 history is an underdog – but that’s F1 for you!

Fernando Alonso leads the field through turn 1 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Photo by Mark Sutton / Sutton Images

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