Alonso reveals his favourite era in his F1 career
Reflecting on the F1 cars he has driven during his long and illustrious career, Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso has picked out the F1 machines from the early 2000s that gave him the best sensation due to their weight and behaviour.
The Spaniard made his debut at the pinnacle of motorsport with Minardi in 2001 which was followed by a year that he spent with Renault as a test driver.
The Oviedo-born driver returned to the sport as a full-time race driver in 2003, clinching his first F1 victory in that season. With Renault coming up with an innovative car for the 2005 F1 season, Alonso secured his first F1 title, beating McLaren's Kimi Räikkönen. The next season saw the Spaniard receive fierce competition from Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, but he was able to add a second F1 title to his achievements.
Although he joined McLaren in the following season, he returned to Renault for the 2008 and 2009 F1 season before heading to Ferrari. Despite securing several sensational victories with the fabled Maranello-based outfit and getting close to further F1 titles in 2010 and 2012, he elected to part ways with the team to join forces with McLaren again in 2015.
Following a difficult period at the Woking-based outfit that saw McLaren struggle with its new engine partner, Honda, Alonso decided to leave Formula One at the end of the 2018 season before returning to the pinnacle of motorsport with Alpine for the 2021 season. The two-time F1 world champion left the Enstone-based team after just a single season to join Aston Martin.
Asked what kind of cars have given him the best feeling and the most pleasure during his illustrious career, the two-time F1 world champion explained that the performance level is not the decisive factor for assessing the sensation behind the wheel of a car.
"Probably I have to think a little bit deeper. But no, I don't think that the pleasure of driving is linked to the performance only. Sometimes you come to a circuit or to even a go-kart track, and you are alone on track, and you are not fighting anyone. And you have a lot of joy, and you have a real good day.
"Sometimes you have a car that is not really well set up or you have a huge understeer or we all, as I said now, you jump in a rental car that you just self-steer to the left or whatever, or it's just not really square, the chassis, and you still have a lot of fun just fighting against that weakness of the car you know and trying to make the car turn the same way, left to right, in some corners.
"So I think it's just overcoming the challenge sometimes of what the car is able to do, which produces satisfaction and joy in driving. And I think the adrenaline and the freedom when you are behind the wheel of choosing what to do, at what speed you want to approach the corner, when you want to brake, 30 metres later, 30 meters earlier.
"So all those kind of decisions that you make by instinct is a sense of freedom that I think increases the joy of driving whatever car. So I don't think it's related to performance.
Pushed on to pick out his favourite Formula One cars, Alonso has revealed that he has enjoyed the F1 machines from the early 2000s which were still light and agile.
"And then comparing different eras of Formula 1, for sure, I think the early 2000s were the best cars to drive. They were very light, very reactive.
"I think the feedback that you get from the car when you have less sophisticated tools is much more pure than what we have now, that is all filtered a little bit by all the technology we have. So yeah I still think that those cars were more fun to drive," Alonso concluded.
