Alonso’s rookie run to victory
The Spanish ace played a key role as he took a step towards the triple crown
There’s an old joke about two explorer friends trekking through the Serengeti, when suddenly, in the distance, they spot a hungry lion about to set upon them. The first one gets ready to run, but the other starts to calmly remove his desert boots and put on some trainers.
“What are you doing?” cries out his mate. “Even with those on, you’re never going to outrun a lion!”
“I don’t need to outrun the lion,” points out the first explorer. “I just need to outrun you…”
Fernando Alonso spent a lot of time wearing those trainers at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The Spaniard came to it knowing that he essentially only had to beat his team’s other car, and he made that his mission during the night-time hours in particular, when he was outstandingly ruthless.
The other two stints he did were instead about consolidating a position: holding station against the #7 car as the lead oscillated between them on Saturday evening, then protecting a considerable advantage on Sunday morning, before handing over to poleman Kazuki Nakajima to seal the victory.
So, two boxes now ticked on the ‘triple crown’ list, with only the Indianapolis 500 yet to fall to him. But this one felt special because, leaving last month’s Spa 6 Hours warm-up event aside, this was the first race of massive international stature that he had won since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix. It’s a mountain climbed; redemption after being cruelly denied a shot at the Indy 500 win last year.
“Right now, it’s difficult to express the emotions: firstly because you are tired and then because you are so focused and concentrated that it’s difficult to really realise what you have achieved,” Alonso said after the podium celebration. “I am very, very proud of my team-mates and I am very proud of Toyota. The winning feeling is amazing and the adrenalin you have now, the experience and emotions, are much bigger than any feelings of tiredness.”
Alonso was relishing the satisfaction of knowing that his own pace had triumphed over experience. The rabbit had been pulled out of the hat, after it so nearly was at Indianapolis just over a year ago. In his own words: “To beat the specialists in oval racing or here in endurance racing – against the guys who know every trick – is great.”
Because even for a man used to multi-tasking, merely adapting to the Toyota TS050 HYBRID was no easy job, let alone discovering how to get the very best out of it, faced with drivers who have been doing it for years (Nakajima and Buemi first contested Le Mans with Toyota in 2012).
“Before the race, the biggest challenge was simply getting used to the car: the systems, the technology, the way you drive going into the corners,” says Alonso. “For example, you brake from longer distances but with light braking for better harvesting and more efficient driving. It’s definitely a completely different driving style to Formula 1, but also quite complex in the way it works.”
This year Alonso is contesting 27 races between his Formula 1 and sportscar programmes, which also included the Daytona 24 Hours at the start of the year and now Fuji after the event was shifted to accommodate him. Right now, he’s in the middle of doing five big races on consecutive weekends: the Canadian GP, Le Mans 24 Hours, French GP, Austrian GP and British GP.
Ask about his commitment to this sort of programme, which feels more like it should belong to the 1950s rather than the present day, and the response is instant: “One hundred per cent. If it wasn’t that, I wouldn’t do it.”
Except in the 1950s, cars were a lot more similar – whether
they were for F1, Le Mans or the road (in the latter case, they were essentially the same thing).
“[It’s] not easy,” Alonso confirms. “There was a lot of training, a lot of effort, a lot of studying. Because this is endurance racing, it’s all about making the car survive every lap, or survive any unexpected problems. We had to practise for a lot of problems that may happen in the race, so it was quite complex preparation.”
In the end, perhaps thanks to that comprehensive programme (which included running on three wheels to simulate returning to the pits with damage), the issues were astonishingly few and far between for both TS050S – and any minor setbacks were entirely of the Toyota crews’ own making. Alonso himself kept his nose spotlessly clean throughout the whole 24 hours – “a perfect debut”, according to Toyota Gazoo Racing boss Shigeki Tomoyama.
The #8 car picked up just two minute-long stop-and-go penalties during the course of the race, on both occasions when Buemi was driving. Mechanically, it exhibited the sort of reliability over 24 hours that must have left Alonso wondering why the same is never guaranteed in just two hours of F1, with just 47 minutes lost during 35 stops (penalties aside).
Much was made of the fact that Toyota was the only manufacturer LMP1 entry this year but, looking at those numbers, it could probably have won anyway.
The race started, of course, under more worrying circumstances, with the entire rear deck of the #8 Toyota needing a precautionary change after being hit – shortly before Buemi set the fastest lap of the race. Alonso himself explained what happened: “We were concerned by the incident at the start, so we took it off, but we saw nothing wrong. In fact, the original one is going back on.”
Throughout Alonso’s first stint, which followed on from starter Buemi’s, he was running close to the leading #7 car driven by
Jose Maria Lopez, which had got the better of the slow zones and safety cars at the beginning of the race.
Then there was yet another safety car. With Le Mans fielding three safety cars at different points around the circuit, one of those quirks of fate led to Alonso and Lopez being caught in the middle of the same safety car train, within a gaggle of slower traffic (a description that could actually apply to the entire rest of the field).
Finally, it was back to green-flag racing and, when the hammer dropped, Alonso had no hesitation in bundling his team-mate out of the way. Some people felt it was too aggressive, but Alonso was sending out a very clear message about his intentions.
“We lost a bit of time with the puncture and the safety car and I think it will be a bit like that for the whole race; we were very close,” he reported after getting out of the car. “From my point of view it was great; I really enjoyed my first stint. I think it was under control – we were taking care of every detail, and extra care in the pitlane. Both cars are pulling away from the others, so that’s the most important thing.”
As expected, the Toyotas were racing themselves, which led team adviser Alex Wurz to describe the race afterwards as “one of the most intense battles within a team that I have ever seen in the whole of motorsport, even if maybe we didn’t show it so much from the outside”.
That intensity was well and truly revealed during Alonso’s second stint – the night shift he had been looking forward to most. Rested after more than five hours off, Alonso climbed back into the #8 Toyota when it was around three minutes behind its sister car, largely the consequence of losing out in a slow zone, followed by a penalty for not slowing down enough during it.
Before long, Alonso was reeling in his rival (Mike Conway initially, then Lopez) at the rate of three seconds or more per lap. As another safety car period came and went, Alonso kept pushing – these were the laps that helped win the race.
By the time he reached the end of his quadruple stint he had just about halved the deficit and was reluctant to get out. “I can do one more,” he said on the radio. “I have the rhythm of the night.”
The decision was taken to pit him anyway. A plan had been put in place and, with drivers only allowed to drive for four hours out of every six, keeping Alonso in the car limited the potential options. When he emerged after three hours and six minutes behind the wheel he was visibly buzzing.
“Yes, I asked to stay in the car,” he confirmed, hardly able to keep still as he was talking. “I felt strong, I felt in the zone. It went well. When you get lucky, it feels like you just get more and more lucky. It’s the opposite of when you get unlucky, as then it feels like you get sucked into a loop. Now half the job is done, and we just have to continue like this.”
Nakajima, who Alonso handed over to in the early hours of the morning, did exactly that, relentlessly harrying the sister car – and it was on his watch that the #8 finally got through at Mulsanne Corner to claim a lead it would never lose, while Buemi then went on to extend the advantage.
But it was Alonso who pulled back the biggest gap during that crucial night stint to put them within touching distance. By the time he completed his final stint on Sunday morning, the hardest part was done. Or maybe not, as he then had to watch from the garage…
As Buemi pointed out, the picture was looking very different when they were three minutes behind just before half-distance and the spectre of team orders was floating in the background of the feast. It was absolutely crucial to close that gap before anybody in management started getting any ideas.
That was what made Alonso’s arrival a triumph. “I think the cold conditions seemed to suit my style a little bit better and I took the maximum from the car,” he said. “Together with Seb and Kazuki, we just tried to stay calm and be in the race until the last couple of hours.”
Job done. There’s obviously going to be a lot of speculation now about what Alonso will do next. But another Le Mans is pretty sure to be close to the top of the list. “I’ve loved every minute of it,” he says. “It’s actually a shame that Le Mans is only every year – it should be every two or three weeks!”
Alonso fever or not, not quite everybody shared his enthusiasm for the event…
“When you get lucky, it feels like you just get more and more lucky”
FERNANDO ALONSO