Alonso exits Formula 1
What next for Spanish ace?
Double world champion Fernando Alonso is poised to race in Indycar and sports cars next year, after deciding to leave Formula 1 at the end of this season.
The Spaniard, who won backto-back titles with Renault in 2005 and ’06, has struggled since moving to Mclaren in 2015 and has failed to score a podium finish in his time with the Woking-based team.
Alonso’s frustration with the lack of power from Honda’s F1 engine was one of the key reasons why Mclaren switched to customer Renault units this year, although the move has not yielded a significant improvement in results. Alonso hasn’t won a race since 2013.
With no seats available in a top team for next year, the 37-year-old decided that “after 17 wonderful years in this sport, it’s time for me to make a change and move on”.
Alonso has signed to race for the works Toyota team in the current FIA World Endurance Championship season, which runs until next year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. He is also closing on a deal to compete in the Us-based Indycar Series with Mclaren. He contested last year’s Indianapolis 500 as a one-off and is understood to have lined up a private test in a 2019-spec car on a road course later this year. Alonso is aiming to win the Indy 500 to complete the ‘triple crown’, alongside Le Mans and the Monaco GP.
Alonso will finish his career as one of the most successful drivers in the history of F1. He has scored 32 race wins — which puts him sixth in the all-time winners’ list — as well as 97 podiums, 22 pole positions and 23 fastest laps to go with his two championships.
Yet those results don’t reflect his talent or ultimate potential. Having won backto-back titles by the age of 24, ill-timed team switches, controversy and bad luck have dogged his career.
He left Renault for Mclaren in 2007 but was challenged by rookie team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Their rivalry quickly escalated, leading to Alonso playing a role in uncovering the ‘spygate’ scandal, when Mclaren team staff were discovered to have received technical information from Ferrari personnel.
Alonso returned to Renault, which was struggling for competitiveness, for 2008. He took two opportunistic wins including the Singapore GP, in which team-mate Nelson Piquet deliberately crashed to bring out a safety car at the perfect time for Alonso’s race strategy. While team bosses and Piquet were penalised for the incident, it was determined that Alonso played no role in it.
Alonso joined Ferrari for 2010 and fell just short of winning the title in his first season with the Scuderia, largely thanks to the team botching his strategy in the Abu Dhabi season finale. He was also runner-up in the points in 2012 and 2013, but when the team struggled to produce a race-winning car for F1’s switch to 1.6-litre turbocharged engines in 2014, Alonso’s frustration at what he regarded as a lack of progress prompted him to leave and make a surprise return to Mclaren.
Although a driver in F1 can only be as good as their car, Alonso’s sometimes abrasive, uncompromising nature limited his opportunities in recent years. But he remained one of F1’s most complete drivers, mixing raw speed with a technical mind and tactical nous few rivals could muster.
While his involvement in numerous controversies affected his reputation,
Alonso’s toil at Mclaren has, ironically, transformed his image among F1 fans. He has shown relentless commitment to extracting the maximum from inferior equipment, although his frustration has been made public via his now infamous mid-race outbursts over the pits-to-car radio.
His attempts to satisfy his thirst for winning by seeking challenges outside of F1 has also shown him in a new light. Alonso will be celebrated as one of F1’s greatest drivers, but his career will always be defined by how much more he could, and perhaps should, have achieved.
Renault’s Carlos Sainz will replace Alonso at Mclaren next year. Mclaren-backed Briton Lando Norris, who races in F2, is in contention to join him.