Fernando Alonso: I am a more complete driver now

“That time away was very useful for me,” reflects Alonso. “Driving in different cars and different series, with different driving styles and different teams that prepare for races in a different way, was good. I learned from all of those experiences. For example, the team spirit and effort in endurance racing is outstanding, and it taught me how much team effort can improve your overall performance.

“I’m not sure how much of my driving style learnings can be applied to F1 – on the Dakar, for example, you often brake with your left foot while you’re at full throttle, which is completely forbidden in an F1 car – but I am a more complete driver now.”

It must have been this more complete Alonso whom the world saw so grippingly blocking Sir Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes-AMG from spoiling the fête française at the Hungaroring.

Already the Spaniard had performed some eye-catching numbers on his comeback tour, most notably a sixth-place finish around the tricky Baku street circuit and seventh at Silverstone, the latter coming after he’d leapt off the line and defended defiantly for several laps to gain four grid positions in F1’s inaugural sprint qualifying race.

It’s all the more impressive when you hear he had a steep learning curve. “The biggest challenge [in returning] was the tyres,” he says. “They’re very different from any other category in motorsport: they only work in a very certain window of temperature and a certain window for maximum performance. You have to work with the team and with the tyre specialists to make sure that you’re starting your qualifying laps at the right temperature, with the brakes in the right window… It was a big challenge on this car.”

And this was in addition to him returning to peak physical fitness in pre-season – a challenge significantly compounded by being knocked off his bicycle by a car, fracturing his jaw. “You have to go back to a different training regime,” he says, “especially with the neck: it’s very unique in F1 how much you need to train it [due to the extreme g-forces during cornering]. You need to prepare yourself, and even if you’re prepared – or think you’re prepared – for the first couple of the races, you’re only perfectly fit by race three or race four, after you’ve completed a couple of grands prix.” Incidentally, those were four grands prix in which Alonso twice finished in the points in what is probably only the sixth-fastest machine.

“I’m definitely looking forward to keeping this momentum,” he says. “We seem a little bit more confident with the car, and with the tyres as well, and are maximising the potential.”

One might conclude that Alonso feels more at home, more relaxed, now that he’s back with the team for which he won the 2005 and 2006 championships. In the interlude, he had an annus horribilis at McLaren; a period of initial promise at Ferrari that after many near misses ended in bitterness; and a nightmare return to McLaren, largely due to Honda’s infamous “GP2 engine”.

“The team is not too different,” Alonso muses. “It has definitely changed: the factory is bigger, there are new technologies on F1 cars and everything is run by computers now, compared with [when I first arrived in] 2002, when it was more manual and handmade. But the team’s DNA remains more or less the same, and the ambitions. The way of work in Renault in the past and Alpine now is a little bit different than in any other team: it’s more of a family atmosphere, more friendly, and I’m happy. I always worked quite nicely in this team, and it’s no different now.”

You would be hard pressed to find an F1 fan not excited at the prospect of a fully fit, firing, motivated and – crucially – happy Alonso being part of the grid, regardless of the fact that he’s now 40. Especially when we will also have Hamilton leading Mercedes, Max Verstappen at Red Bull, two classy young drivers at Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel at a cash-injected Aston Martin, a resurgent McLaren with a new British star… Indeed, Alonso considers this one of the most competitive cohorts of which he has been a member.

And the fans’ excitement will hit fever pitch should his faith in his Alpine team be justified in 2022, when a new technical formula will be imposed in the hope of vastly improving the closeness of racing between F1 cars.

“The 2022 car is taking priority for everyone now, and the expectations are high,” Alonso says. “We know that the change of regulations is big enough that it can change the order of the grid. So it’s a good opportunity for many teams: Alpine, McLaren, Ferrari… There are many that are putting a lot of hopes into next year. And we will try to be a contender for bigger things.” In fact, he might have even uttered the word ‘championships’…

Alonso's top five Grands Prix

2005 San Marino GP: Alonso proved he was title material as he held off Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari for lap after lap to win, despite being down on power, in what can be seen as a changing of the generational guard.