Alonso eyeing chance to end Red Bull winning streak
Fernando Alonso will seek to break Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s winning streak and claim his first win since 2013 as Formula One resumes this weekend with the 80th running of the classic Monaco Grand Prix.
After floods forced the cancellation of last week’s European ‘season opener’, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, the F1 circus was happy to be greeted by blue skies and warm sunshine in the Mediterranean principality on Wednesday.
As visitors sought shade, Alonso and his Aston Martin team contemplated how to gamble on delivering his third win on the old, but glamourised street circuit, where he triumphed with Renault in 2006 and McLaren in 2007.
After four third-place finishes from five races, the 41-year-old Spaniard has emerged as not only the biggest threat to double champion Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Perez, but also this year’s box office attraction, a wily wolf with unrivalled experience.
“We have a car that maybe isn’t the fastest on the straights, but very good in the corners,” he explained with a flash of his customary mischievous grin.
“So we need to improve that –but it is good for the circuits that are slower like Monaco and Budapest and Singapore.”
Alonso is third in the drivers’ title race on 75 points behind Verstappen on 119 and Perez, a street circuit specialist who won last year’s race and more recently in Jeddah and Baku, on 105.
“This is the race every driver grows up and wants to win and I was lucky enough to achieve that last season,” Perez said. “So, it’s made me hungrier to stand on the top step again.”
Local hero Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who has never tasted success at his home event, on what was once his bus-route to school, will hope for a change of fortune as he bids for a third consecutive Monaco pole position.
Since 2017, he has accumulated only 12 points – for finishing fourth in 2022 – and is long overdue a result that reflects his precious talent, Ferrari’s form and reliability notwithstanding.