Alonso: “I need to destroy my opponents’ forces”

At 41 years old, he is the oldest driver on the grid, and yet he proves again this season that he can still be competitive. He manages to combine the experience accumulated over the years with his natural talent.

Over the years, Fernando Alonso always managed to find any competitive advantage that he could use to his advantage. During the Austrian Grand Prix, for example, he cleaned his starting position on the grid to make the best possible start.

The Spanish driver revealed in the pages of Autosport that he appreciates these little details being highlighted. He considers it to be part of his competitive side, to exploit his strengths in the hope that it reveals certain weaknesses in his competitors.

« I have to give 100% in everything I do. I have to defeat all the opposing forces. That’s what I do in every sport I practice. When I play tennis and face someone better than me, I used to bounce the ball very high to throw off their rhythm and put them in an uncomfortable situation. »

“It’s not just in motorsport. I just need to overpower others and maximize my own strengths,” he explains.

Experience develops other qualities.

There is no doubt for Alonso that his Formula 1 experience has given him advantages that allow him to be much better in certain areas.

(I) I think that experience helps in several cases. Especially for starts, being attentive, tire management, pit stops, the way to approach mechanics… But also the way to approach weekends: practice sessions, their importance or not…

When you are young, you sometimes pay too much attention to every move you make, even in FP1 where you feel like it’s the title-winning move… A lot of progress has been made in wet and humid conditions. Usually, races in the rain are very long, you know, things can quickly change, there are a lot of safety cars, drying lines. There are more opportunities.

Each turn is not the last turn. This kind of thing, where I made mistakes at the beginning, that I now try to avoid. And all of this comes from your mistakes and your experience.

Age is not a handicap.

Fernando Alonso doesn’t think that his age could have led to any decline in any way, especially after taking a two-season break in Formula 1, allowing him to recharge his batteries.

Regarding the drawbacks, it is difficult to say anything because I don’t think I miss anything that I had when I was younger, he said.

Maybe in 2018, I felt mentally exhausted from all the marketing and traveling and things like that. And I needed those two years. Now, I feel good. So I don’t know if it’s just these two years that helped me. Or if it’s the fact that I just have a different approach now.

Above all, the native of Oviedo believes that he is a much better version of himself since his return to F1 than he was at the end of his first stint.

« It is not only your own cockpit and your own strategy, so maybe I understand better how the race unfolds. And also the different categories in which I have driven: I think they teach me different things.

»

There are different racing philosophies, different driving techniques. When you lose the car, when you experience oversteer, maybe my hands and feet are doing something that I didn’t know before, because I only drove Formula 1 cars before. So, in a way, I feel more in control of things now.

Fernando Alonso is not done yet with his Formula 1 story. The driver is expected to continue racing in the category for at least the next two years, as he has joined Aston Martin to replace the four-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel.