Alonso mania
The Spanish Grand Prix weekend has only one soundtrack. It is pretty repetitive, but sung with great passion: “Aloooooonso”, “Alooooooonso” cried the 130,000 fans packed into the Circuit de Catalunya yesterday, as their favourite son stormed to victory.
Fernando himself repeatedly talked about the fans and their passion, and even suggested that their delighted reactions after each round of pit-stops helped him gauge exactly how Michael Schumacher’s race was unfolding ten seconds behind him – a strange echo of Juan Manuel Fangio’s instinctive reaction in the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix when, leading the race and noticing the spectators looking away from him, he instinctively slowed and thus avoided a nine-car pile-up that had started behind him the previous lap.
But if you thought Barcelona was a spectacle, you haven’t yet seen Seville. On Sunday 21 May, the Renault F1 Roadshow will roll into the Spanish city, complete with the reigning World Champion and his championship-winning Renault R25. At a free-for-the-public event, Fernando will conduct a live demonstration of his F1 car on the city streets in front of a crowd of up to half a million spectators – which would, for the record, probably make it the biggest single-day motorsport event on the globe in 2006. “Barcelona was an unforgettable weekend for me, probably the best feeling I have had in an F1 car,” explained Fernando. “Seville will be a second Spanish Grand Prix for me, a fantastic thing with maybe half a million people. The Roadshow is a great programme because we can get close to the fans and really share their emotion. I am looking forward to seeing my people on Sunday, and to saying thank you to them for their amazing support.”
CARS The Movie
The Renault F1 Team welcomed two special guests on Sunday, as Hollywood star Owen Wilson joined Disney-Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter in the team garage. Wilson is well known for films such as Starsky and Hutch, The Wedding Crashers and The Royal Tenenbaums, while Lasseter is the brains behind some of the world’s best animated features, such as Toy Story, The Incredibles or Monsters Inc. They were promoting the forthcoming Pixar feature film ‘CARS The Movie’, for which members of the F1 fraternity, including Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella, have recorded voices for different language versions. It was Wilson’s first visit to the F1 paddock, and he left impressed. “This is the first ever race I have been to, and it is pretty exciting to be backstage and to see what goes into it. It seems much more technological than NASCAR which we have in the US,” commented the actor. “There’s a lot of race fans here, and it struck me how strange it is that in every game, America has its own version – and it’s the same with racing. I kind of wish we took part more, so we could be involved in all of this.” So what about the film itself, in which Wilson voices a lead character, alongside Paul Newman. “It has come from director John Lasseter’s love of cars, he has set it in a world of cars, and I am literally the voice of a race car. So it tells my journey, starting as an obnoxious race car, who gets his comeuppance and learns his lessons. It’s a really Hollywood story!”
The numbers game
As we have now completed one third of the 2006 season, it is interesting to take a look back at the situation last year after six rounds of the championship – and compare the Renault F1 Team’s performance to what it had achieved twelve months ago.
So far in 2006, the Renault F1 Team has scored an average of 13 points per race, compared to 10.5 points per races after six races in 2005. That means the team’s scoring percentage has risen from 58% in 2005, to 72% in 2006. Fernando Alonso has a 90% scoring record, with 54 points from a maximum possible 60 (compared to 82% in 2005) while Giancarlo Fisichella has a 40% scoring record, up from 23% at the same stage in 2005. Paradoxically, though, Alonso is now involved in a closer fight for the drivers’ title: although he has scored more points than last year, he has a lead of only 15 points compared to 22 points after 6 races in 2005. However, the team holds a 19 point advantage in the Constructors’ Championship, compared to a 12-point lead in 2005.
