C.When Aston Martin signed Fernando Alonso he knew he was taking more than a pilot. A team leader, an engineer, a designer, and even a journalist. With his veteran, 367 races, and 20 seasons in the F1 elite (Renault, Ferrari, McLaren and now Aston Martin), the Spaniard is literally a catalyst, when the others go, he comes back.
At Aston Martin he is reducing to two years what it would take five to learn. Whoever has fought against Ferrari in the Schumacher era (and defeated), lived through a Civil War at McLaren and the trouble of fighting for points, has a unique perspective to make a team that is not champion.
Because there is a car, a factory and a driver, but to be number 1attack the throne of the greased Red Bull, there are other steps more and for his part, all that happens to pull tricks from under the stones while the team fine-tunes everything from ‘pit stops’ to the most diverse strategies, for when the beans are really on the line. Austria last Sunday was a compendium of that point that those from Silverstone are going through.
“The team is doing well, but in this case, we are not protesting against a team or a driver, but rather against the Dirección de Carrera for not applying the penalties. They erased a hundred laps for exceeding the limits of the track, but they didn’t apply it as a penalty, so it was very simple,” he insisted yesterday. “We saw that there were more than a hundred laps, according to what was said on TV, that there were applied and we just asked where those returns come from? It was something natural, it was a mistake in the direction of the race or the laps or the non-penalties”.
And so it was. Did only he and the team realize? Alonso acknowledged that those who saw the race on DAZN in Spain warned him at the end they did not stop denouncing the departure of pilots, many not penalized. And an hour later they were already protesting the results. Others do not have that alertness, and that desire to be aware of everything and score points is that of the Renault era, when they fought against the established power. As it would be clear that I sent a WhatsApp to Lando Norris telling him, “I got you”, already counting the sanctions. He only managed it with Sainz, but he almost raised another position to his English friend.
“You can’t tell me so late, mate”, Then he told the engineer by radio when it was time to enter the pits. It is not the first time that he has ‘educated’ those who have been there for less time than him. “Let’s look at more cars and decide later, the race is very long,” was another message. In the end, he did not add controversy, here they listen to him, not like in Alpine, because he knows that this is not the time, it is a year for planting. “He is the one who best understands long-distance racing,” Guenther Steiner told this newspaper.
In Arabia they pulled reflexes when protesting Alonso’s sanction for touching his car in a ‘stop and go’. “Every possible trick was used, we put old videos with people who only touched the front jack, but without working on the wheels”, he said yesterday in reference to the evidence against Hamilton, who was not penalized for the same thing on another occasion. And they won again. They insist, they don’t give up. “But I won’t win them all, of course,” Fernando said yesterday.
“The team is pressing on the 360, and they are not leaving any area, they do it with common sense”, He added in the run-up to the British Grand Prix, where he does not expect to attack victory except for a Red Bull error. They are the mirror to look at, not only because of their great car, but also because of the perfection with which they perform on weekends. And Fernando works on that, especially with a guy like Andy Stevenson who is an ax in the offices and who pays attention to everything he protests. The result, 6 more points between Arabia and Austria, which now seems little, but which one day may be vital. Fernando lost the title three times for even less: 1 point in 2007, three in 2012 and four in 2010.
He said it with surgeon precision, his boss, for example, Mike Krack. “He is guiding the team, motivating him a lot… Fernando has skills that many people don’t have. He guides us in the design, directs the team and infects us with his enthusiasm. And he also has the ability to drive, but also to carry out an analysis, to ask questions, to see what is happening on television. I would say that motivation and determination to do well are key for everyone.”
