Remembering Fernando Alonso’s last Formula 1 win 10 years on : PlanetF1

If Fernando Alonso is somehow destined to never again stand on the top step of a Formula 1 podium, there are worse ways to sign off than a glorious win at home. 

Today (May 12) marks a full decade since his last – no, most recent – F1 victory, for Ferrari at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Who back then could have foreseen what Fernando was in for, just weeks after his previous win and so soon after 2012, possibly the greatest work of individual brilliance to ever be stitched together by a racing driver over a single season?

Who was to know that Alonso was about to develop an F1 form of locked-in syndrome, a driver with all the ability and skill of his competitors but without the car to convey it fully?

So frustrating, so unfair, so unjust.

When you think of Barcelona 2013, the first image to come to mind is the last: Alonso standing triumphantly on the monocoque of his car in parc ferme with both arms raised in celebration, one hand clenching a fist and the other clutching a Spanish flag he picked up on the in lap.

That blue-and-yellow helmet (a shut visor always more dramatic in the glow of victory), those red overalls, the sun gleaming off him to create a contrast with the grey clouds behind in the distance – it just looks so powerful. It just looks so right.

So much so that even now it leaves you asking how Alonso and Ferrari, those two perfectly suited forces of nature over five years together, could get it wrong.

The other abiding image of that afternoon takes us right back to the start – and that pass.

Study Alonso’s onboards for any length of time and it soon becomes clear that he places a greater value than most on staying out of the turbulent air of the car ahead.

That consideration would only have increased in light of his trips to the Indianapolis 500 over recent years, where the car’s behaviour is transformed in traffic, and upon his return to F1 late in the era of extreme downforce.

Look closely and all of his most memorable overtakes over the last few seasons – taking six cars on the opening lap of the Silverstone sprint in 2021, charging around the outside of Pierre Gasly later that year in Qatar – have been built on the basic principle of feeding his front wing a constant stream of clean air, retaining a greater proportion of his car’s overall downforce compared to those around him.

Was that, maybe, what Alonso was referring to when he claimed to have taught Lewis Hamilton a trick or two as the old warrior fought with all his might to contain the irrepressible Mercedes for 11 laps in Hungary in 2021?

If Hamilton had been paying close attention, he would have noticed that a taster session in Fernando’s Racing School had come more than eight years earlier in Catalunya.

With a good launch from fifth on the grid, Alonso positioned himself on the outside on the approach to the first corner and – already a step ahead, plotting where he wanted to position the car a couple of corners later…