Alonso stays in his contrarian lane
Driver’s Indy quest rankles peers in F1
Fernando Alonso has not so much slipped into pole position in the battle for attention at the Indianapolis 500 as grasped the spotlight in a bearhug and pinned it close to his chest.
The Formula One star from Spain is charismatic, charming and seeking to chase history by skipping the Monaco Grand Prix, where race car drivers rub shoulders with those seeking fortune in the tuxedo-filled and stiletto-heeled casinos of Monte Carlo.
That he is doing so is to take his own gamble amid the marbles of the Brickyard, where fates can rest on weather and chance and the confluence of timing as much as steering dexterity, and has invigorated the grand old race as its 101st rendition closes in Sunday (ABC, noon ET).
“This is a special experience,” Alonso said this week. “It is something unique, and it feels special to be the person to try it. This has no comparison to any other event. I am here to experience it — and to try to win.”
Alonso-mania has swept through Indianapolis, and everyone is talking about it, from IndyCar’s most esteemed competitors to the fast-arriving throng that could push attendance above 325,000 on Sunday, plus, best of all, a crossover audience that might typically pay scant focus to this pinnacle of the open-wheel calendar.
The juggernaut swept into New York on Tuesday, with Alonso’s day consisting of a 10-stop tour of the Big Apple’s media giants, starting at 7 a.m. with wheat toast and cappuccino before leaving a little boutique hotel on Manhattan’s west side and culminating in a private jet back to Indianapolis that landed at 10 p.m.
Those who chase mythical grails tend to draw such magnetic fervor, and while Alonso’s stated desire to complete a miraculous career triumvirate of the Monaco GP (he has won two), the Indy 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans (in later years) is wildly ambitious, it has proved to be a golden headline grabber.
Yet while there is significant intrigue in Alonso’s trans-Atlantic jaunt in F1’s European hotbed, back home the popular 35year-old is not receiving quite the same back-slapping plaudits for his bold American adventure.
For a start, his F1 rivals engaged in a little convoluted doublespeak last week, saying they would be supporting him at Indy and watching with interest but making it clear that ditching Monaco was not a great move.
“I wound never have done it if I had to miss a race for it,” said Nico Rosberg, who won at Le Mans in 2015. It’s a sentiment that was relatively universal among the racers who were polled.
Meanwhile, Alonso, a two-time world champion and widely credited with being one of the most accomplished car managers in recent history, is in a tricky spot back home.
His McLaren F1 team has been embarrassingly inept this season, and Alonso has finished just one race, in his native Spain, landing in 12th place and two laps behind winner Lewis Hamilton.
The team is light years removed from its glory days of the 1980s and early ’90s, when racers such as the late Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda and Alain Prost reigned supreme and combined for seven titles in McLaren colors.
Alonso has said he will weigh his options after the summer, but potential suitors seem to be speedily turning away, perhaps gulping at his present contract price of $36 million a year.
He had been linked with a move to Renault, where he won both of his world titles. But Prost, a special adviser for Renault, told Sky Sports this week that the team could not offer him a car good enough “to be world champion next year — and also maybe in two years.”
Another reported suitor, Mercedes, also seemed to take itself out of the running, with team chief Toto Wolff saying he was “happy with what we’ve got right now.”
Compared to IndyCar, F1 remains a somewhat snooty and elitist place. That’s not even a criticism; it is part of its brand and it plays off it. Create a veneer of exclusivity and mystique, the theory goes, and people will want to be part of it even more. What a smack in the teeth to the old guard then, that Alonso would seek to take a week off to hang with the Yanks, who do things a bit differently.
IndyCar goes to extreme lengths to be customer-friendly and in Alonso has found the best thing a supporter could hope for, something to debate over during the interminable fortnight between the racers arriving trackside and eventually getting their motors running in competitive combat.
No one knows how he will fare on the oval, even the impressive glimpse that placed him fifth on the grid offering little in the way of meaningful indication.
It is a philosophical and technical debate that the guy in the bar has as much chance of being right on as some technical wizard in pit lane peering over lap times, fuel efficiency and engine performance.
Even without the fresh visitor from afar, the 500 has compelling characters and remarkable story lines. Pole-sitter Scott Dixon prompts two major questions this week: Can he achieve his long-awaited second Indy 500 victory, and would that mean a quesadilla combo is the meal of champions?
It is Alonso who provides the glamour here, and he has been firmly welcomed into the fray. If F1 thinks snobbishness and Euro chic add gravitas, IndyCar has taken a far different tack, making its racers accessible and relatable, albeit with the kind of screw loose needed to send supersonic machines down a track at hellacious speed.
If someone was going to attempt this courageous quest, Alonso was the right man for trying to confound the skeptics.
He has a history of doing just that, or taking the contrarian tack. Just as rookies are not supposed to win here, especially when they have no real experience on an oval, neither was Alonso supposed to outperform the quality of the cars he has raced in for much of the last decade.
Indeed, he wasn’t supposed to make much headway in the sport at all, coming from a family of relatively modest means, but his sheer talent and willpower won through.
Sometimes he just does what makes no sense. Years back he shifted his residence from Switzerland to Spain in order to be nearer family, costing himself a cool $70 million in taxes in the process. He supports two major Spanish soccer teams, tantamount to sacrilege in a country where singular loyalty is demanded.
Yes, he likes the path untrodden, and he will find one Sunday.