EL MATADOR ALONSO’S FRESH CHALLENGE
How Spaniard’s third spell at Renault happened
The first time Fernando Alonso was at Renault he drove for the team for four seasons and won two world titles. The second time it was a marriage of convenience, a two-year stop-gap that yielded just a couple of wins and one of Formula 1’s greatest scandals with the controversy of the
2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
Sequels are tough enough but the third part of a trilogy is particularly challenging. And as F1 waits for the third act of ‘Alonso at Renault’ to begin in 2021, a pragmatic prediction would be that it will be difficult for this stint to even match the success of 2008 and 2009 (minus ‘Crashgate’), let alone replicate the glory days of the early years of Alonso’s career.
Alonso signed his deal to reunite with Renault out of a mutual need for one another. Renault was too unconvincing in the F1 midfield to persuade one of the leading drivers for a rival team to jump ship. And Alonso didn’t have a route back to F1 with a race-winning team.
So Alonso weighed up his options and found two reasons to believe in the team that will now be known as Alpine:
“One, in terms of expectations and building something from the midfield to the top, it was very attractive, very appealing. And secondly because I know everyone in this team. It’s the third time I’ve come here and I knew I would feel at home here.”
There are some significant differences between the Renault that Alonso won with, and the current version.
For starters, it’s not going to race as Renault – Alonso will spearhead the first year of the Alpine brand in F1.
But a lot of the people are the same, the Renault corporate involvement is technically the same, and it’s the same Enstone base of operations albeit considerably upgraded in the dozen or so years since Alonso last visited.
Alonso himself is a different driver, too. He is now much closer to the finishing line in his top-level racing career than he is the starting lights, he has been out of F1 for two seasons – and he didn’t have a full racing programme at all in 2020.
Shortly after his return was announced last year, Alonso said none of that mattered. He’d become the World Endurance champion since leaving
F1, added a second Le Mans 24 Hours victory to his CV, and took part in the Dakar Rally and was preparing for another crack at the Indianapolis 500.
“I feel ready and I feel at 100% in terms of driving,” Alonso says.
“We did a couple of fitness tests
[last summer] and had the best results ever in my career.
“I’m extremely motivated, happy, and stronger than ever.”
While Alonso has undertaken a rigorous programme to familiarise himself with grand prix cars, he has kept himself sharp with disciplined, competitive efforts elsewhere.
For example, ex-Renault engineering director Pat Symonds says of Alonso’s experience driving Toyota’s WEC challenger: “It was fascinating to get his insights into how he had learned to drive the LMP1 car, and particularly with the energy regeneration on that car, how he’d discovered things that the other drivers hadn’t discovered.
“They’d been driving it for a while, he came along and said, ‘If I do this, if I do that, if I lift here and brake here, I’ve actually got more energy to play with.’ He’s very, very good with things like that.”
In 2020 Alonso also took part in the Indianapolis 500 for a second time and then the final part of his year was spent throwing himself into the learning process at Renault, driving its 2018 car and controversially taking part in the post-season Abu Dhabi rookie test.
Alonso believes he learned something from every extracurricular experience. That could play to one of Alonso’s greatest strengths, evident in F1 and in his multi-disciplined sabbatical: his adaptability.
“I consider myself to be quite complete – maybe I score nine in everything,” he says. “Maybe there’s a faster driver in wet conditions or on
Saturday or at the start, one that’s better than me. But I think I’m close to the top in many circumstances and categories, and in the championship that’s a good thing to have.
“It’s like when you have any top athlete doing well in every single category, in the end you win.”
And as for his age? “As far as I saw Formula 1 for many years the stopwatch is the only thing that matters. Not the age. I never had a classification [in a] race, based on [my] passport, date of birth. Always on the stopwatch. So hopefully I’m still fast. Faster than them.”
Alonso has lost none of the swagger or self-belief that typified his first F1 career, especially in the difficult final McLaren years. He is adamant his net ability as a driver is as good, if not superior, to when he last raced in F1.
That assumes his speed has not dwindled or the added experience he’s gained has offset the natural physical decline that comes with age. He is confident.
But he is not delusional.
“Honestly, I expect to be straight up to speed,” says Alonso. “But I’m aware of the challenge that maybe I face in the first couple of races.
“Not only on pure speed, but also on procedures, steering wheel commands, things that are new for me and could take some time. I’m aware that I could struggle a little bit. But I want to think that it will not happen.”
If Alonso did not believe that was a risk he would not have considered it necessary to complete so many days of running last year. It was Alonso who pushed for multiple days in a 2018 Renault in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, in addition to a filming day in the 2020 car and finally a proper run in the R.S.20 in the post-season Abu Dhabi test – where Alonso was quickest.
Every time Alonso drove, he sought to gain a small advantage.
“After 18 years in Formula 1 and now getting back, it’s true that you are missing a little bit the braking points, how quick all the corners arrive, braking performance, cornering speed performance,” he said after his first run in the 2020 Renault.
“So there are many things that I need to get used to again. But it will take a shorter period of time than getting used to a completely new thing, like for example Dakar or Indy.”
All Alonso’s preparations will have limited value though if his car is not good enough to match his ability. Renault missed out in the fight for third in the constructors’ championship last year but there were enough signs of positivity for Alonso to start talking more enthusiastically about 2021 – having initially implored the team to abandon this season and focus fully on the new technical rules of 2022.
But once Daniel Ricciardo had finally ended Renault’s podium drought last year, Alonso’s appetite for the first season of his return seemed to grow. Suddenly, 2021 seemed like much less likely to just be a year treading water – even if the big shift in fortunes for the team will still have to wait until 2022.
“I think the team is in good shape for the future,” says Alonso. “I’ve been delighted to see the improvements.
“We’ve still got a long way to go and the midfield is very tight but
I think the guys have done an amazing job trackside. I am looking forward to being back in the mix.
“We all have high hopes. But at the same time, I think we have to have the feet on the ground, knowing the regulations will be more or less the same until 2022. We know that the deficit all the midfield teams have right now will carry on [in 2021].”
Knowing this move is his last shot at F1 success, Alonso is still keeping the pressure on for ‘22. He urged Renault to be at work on the new rules in the windtunnel on January 1, 2021 – the first day the rules allowed aero testing to take place for 2022 cars.
With so much changing there is an opportunity for the shrewdest, sharpest operators to get a head start. And Symonds reckons Alonso stands to benefit from that – boosting the chance of his comeback being successful.
“Will the wily old Fernando Alonso be the first to suss out how best to get the performance from that [2022] car? I think the answer will be yes,” says Symonds.
“I think he’ll be very quick to figure out what matters and what doesn’t matter, how to work with the engineers to get the best set-up from the car, how the 18-inch tyres behave differently from the 13-inch – all these kinds of things.
“I think the 2022 car will be good for him because it’ll be a bit of reset for everyone. And I think it will help Fernando quite a lot.”
Alonso will still need a quality car to have a shot at winning in F1 again, let alone the third title he yearns for. But he cannot do anything on the sidelines, so getting back in the game was vital – even if he was never quite as desperate as returning by any means necessary.
It would be a risky gamble to bet on Alonso’s third stint with ‘Renault’ emulating the results of either of the first two. But all he wants from Alpine is a sniff at success.
If Alonso gets that, all bets are off.
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