Fernando Alonso: The CEO of Worst Career Decisions
- Tarasekhar Padhy
- Dec 13, 2024
- 8 min read
Fernando Alonso.
The 2x Formula 1 world champion is one of the most talented drivers for all the 21 seasons he competed in the sport. Even at the ripe age of 43, he is still putting in drives that will put many young drivers to shame.
Consider the final two races of the 2024 season alone — consecutive points finishes in a tractor while his teammate was nowhere close to his shadows.
However, as Kanye West eloquently put it, “To whom much is given, much is tested”, the Spaniard has made more than his fair share of mistakes off the track that definitely prevented him from achieving his full potential.
In this article, let’s look at those off-track mistakes that led to poor career decisions to analyze how they affected him and try to deduce the underlying cause behind them all.
2007: Leaving McLaren for Bad Reasons
Fernando Alonso thought he would be partnering with Pedro de la Rosa, a fellow Spaniard who replaced Montoya mid-season. The 2x world champion believed it would be smooth sailing to a third world title as de la Rosa idolized Alonso and was visibly worse than Fernando.
However, Fernando found that it would be a rookie by the name of Lewis Hamilton. Initially, the Spaniard counted Lewis out even telling Ron Dennis that they may find it difficult to win the constructor’s title. Of course, we all found out in the first corner of the first race of the 2007 season when Hamilton overtook his more experienced teammate.
Lewis’ stellar debut season allowed him to get the better of his teammate in the overall drivers’ standings. Even though both McLaren drivers were even on points, Hamilton was one place above because he had more podium finishes.
Additionally, the season was filled with intra-team tension due to the championship rivalry between Hamilton and Alonso. Consequently, Fernando decided to jump ship where he was the clear #1 driver and his needs were more prioritized over the second car.
This was a terrible decision because McLaren was pretty competitive in those times. Lewis even won the 2008 drivers’ championship, beating Massa by one point. Perhaps if Alonso stuck for another year, he could have dealt with Lewis’ pressure better and eventually won. McLaren could have won both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.
Anyway, the decision away from McLaren was weird too. Basically, he wanted to go to Ferrari. His idol Schumacher won and dominated in a Ferrari and just like McLaren, the Prancing Horses were also quite strong in those years.
But there was one problem.
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa had contracts until the end of 2009, meaning he won’t get to drive a Ferrari until 2010 at the earliest.
Red Bull Racing approached him. Twice. And Fernando denied him twice. He stated that the team was new, sponsored by an energy drink company, and had limited success. Despite knowing that the regulation changes would take effect from 2009 and things could drastically change, which they did, he chose to return to Renault.
Look, at this point, it was evident that Renault was struggling. In 2007, Renault was over 150 points behind Ferrari, who were constructor’s champions, at a time when only the top 8 scored points and the winner scored only ten.
So, he definitely knew that Renault wouldn’t be suddenly competitive, at least on a championship level, in the next immediate year. Might as well roll the dice with Red Bull.
The two years in Renault were ‘meh.’ In 2008, he had three wins but finished P5 in the overall standings. The following year was even horrible. Zero wins and P9.
Alonso realized in mid-2009 that Red Bull would be the next championship-winning machine and his team reached out to the Milton Keynes outfit, but they already had a strong and stable driver lineup.
2010-2014: Half a Decade in Red
2011 and 2013 were clear Red Bull's dominance. In fact, Sebastian racked up his nine-race winning streak in 2013, where there were only 19 races compared to 24 in 2024.
2014 was pure Mercedes and Hamilton's dominance.
The only years left were 2010 and 2012.
In 2010, he lost the championship by four points to Sebastian Vettel. The Ferrari was easily the third-fastest car on the grid. I would say they were only slightly faster than the Mercedes but the Spaniard outdrove that shitbox. Fernando’s teammate Massa, finished P6.
In 2012, he lost the championship by three points to Sebastian Vettel. The Ferrari was runner’s up in the constructors’ championship as well. However, the points difference to McLaren Mercedes suggests that it was on par with their pace. Moreover, Massa finished the season at P7 that year.
To put it together, Fernando Alonso had a chance at the world title in 2010 and 2012 because he outdrove that shitbox to the max. If he just tried out with Red Bull in 2008-09, he could have seen the potential and actually won four more championships in those years.
2015-2018: ‘S’ is Silent in Spain
After a frustrating 2014 season, Fernando decided to part ways with Ferrari. His next move was McLaren-Honda and for weird reasons.
Between 1988-1992, the McLaren-Honda partnership won them four consecutive driver’s and constructors’ championships. Furthermore, Ayrton Senna was Alonso’s idol, so he simped over the historic partnership in 2015.
He failed to see that in the previous partnership, Honda was already in the F1 business. Honda returned to F1 in 1983 and supplied engines to Spirit Racing. Then, they supplied engines to Williams for the next four years, bagging them two constructor’s titles. They also worked with Lotus for a year before partnering with McLaren in 1988.
However, in 2015, Honda returned after a seven-year hiatus. You have no idea how they are gonna perform.
It seems that Alonso went to McLaren-Honda partly because of the romanticization but primarily because they lacked a leader after Hamilton’s departure and had the air of familiarity with Ron Dennis.
We all know how terrible those years were. Fernando was struggling to finish races. He was lucky when he scored points, such was the pace of the car when it didn’t have mechanical failures.
2019: A Chance for Red Bull
Following a miserable stint at McLaren-Honda, which became McLaren-Renault in 2018, Alonso wanted to take some time off. However, the Milton Keynes outfit did knock on his door, offering him the seat of the departing Daniel Ricciardo for the 2019 season.
Well, that’s what Fernando says.
Red Bull denies that claim.
Even though that was true, I can understand why Fernando declined that offer. Red Bull was still running the Renault engines which were faulty, to say the least, and were migrating to Honda engines where Alonso had terrible experiences.
I guess it was never meant to be.
2021-2022: Alpine, With Ocon
(In his two-year break, the 2x F1 world champion went to other sports like the WEC.)
The Alpine, formerly Renault, is a tractor. Yes, toward the end of the 2025 season, the French outfit showed some pace, but they were an absolute tractor before that.
At the same time, considering it is a midfield team, 2021 wasn’t that bad. Fernando got a podium that season and helped his teammate Esteban Ocon win his first and, till now, only race by defending against Lewis like a lion. I guess he finally avenged for 2007 considering Hamilton lost the championship that year.
However, it went to shit pretty quickly.
The Spaniard suffered six DNFs the following season and Ocon added to that suffering by being a dickhead in Hungary, Brazil, and Qatar. Fernando was pretty vocal about his teammate’s racing tactics and was happy that he won’t be renewing his contract for the upcoming season.
2023-Beyond: With the Copycats
Since the Lawrence Stroll acquisition, the team has undergone many name changes but their philosophy remains the same — mimic the winners.
In the first year under the Stroll administration, they copied the Mercedes W10. The RP20 was also known as the Pink Mercedes. They were penalized 14 points and also fined a lot of cash (400k Euros).
They would start the season well, and have a few good races, but overall they would be shit.
This is because you can’t win championships at the pinnacle of motorsport by simply copying other teams. You need the core design philosophy and learn through experience. It will be extremely difficult for the Racing Point engineers to troubleshoot or improve the car through the season because they don’t know the thought process behind the components’ designs.
And it was clearly visible in the 2023 season when the team was known as Aston Martin.
This time, they copied the side pod design from Ferrari and Red Bull, which gave them a great aero advantage, at least at the start of the season. The following table has the details of Fernando Alonso:
2023 Season | Races | Total Points | Average Finishing Position |
First Third | Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Miami, Monaco, Spain | 99 | 3.43 |
Second Third | Canada, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy | 69 | 5.29 |
Final Third | Singapore, Japan, Qatar, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi | 36 | 8.13 |
It is pretty clear that as the season progresses, they fail to develop the car because they have copied from others. This may give some quick results, but F1 teams seldom win championships with this strategy. The aforementioned trend is similar in 2020.
I guess this answers the question, “Why doesn’t everyone copy the best team?”
In the 2024 season, the performance of the AMR24 was somewhat consistent. The only problem was that it was consistently poor. The following table reflects the data for Fernando for this season:
Season Third | Races | Total Points | Average Finishing Position |
First Third | Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, China, Miami, Emilia-Romagna | 33 | 9.14 |
Second Third | Monaco, Canada, Spain, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary, Belgium | 16 | 9.14 |
Final Third | Netherlands, Italy, Azerbaijan, Singapore, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar, Abu Dhabi | 21 | 9.1 |
As you can see, the first third is reminiscent of the last third of the previous season. And they kind of stayed at that level.
This is, again, predictable, because if the drop-off is so high between the first and third quarters of the 2023 season, the difference between the 2023 season and the 2024 season makes sense.
A lot of pundits and experts are predicting that Alonso will have a great year in 2026 in an Adrian Newey-designed car, but I totally disagree. The decision to sign Adrian Newey is yet another copycat decision by Lawrence Stroll.
He looked around and thought, well what do the current champions have that I do not, and he clearly said “Newey.”
Speaking of Aston Martin’s copycat moves, the exclusive engine deal with Honda also falls into that category. Lawrence saw that Red Bull had a great season with an Adrian Newey-designed and Honda engine-powered F1 car and wants to replicate that success.
Conclusion: Fernando Fails to Read Teams
Fernando is a beast in an F1 car. Even at this age, he has demonstrated that he’s still got it.
However, he sucks at simulating where a team will be in the future. Since 2007, the guy has been making one horrible career decision after another.
He should have stayed with McLaren in 2008-09 because the Ferrari move wouldn’t materialize till 2010 and the Woking outfit still had a competitive car. He could have won one in 2008. If leaving McLaren was crucial, he was better off rolling the dice with Red Bull considering Alpine was already falling off in 2007.
After the five-year stint at Ferrari, he should have considered other options. Mercedes definitely had the best engine and Honda was returning after seven years. If his claims about the Red Bull offer in 2019 were true, he should have taken it.
When he returned, I guess Alpine was his best bet as there weren’t many viable options. But moving to Aston Martin despite knowing they are copycats still baffles me. You can’t win championships by mimicking your rivals in the pinnacle of the Motorsport.
It’s weird that McLaren now is a championship-winning team, like Red Bull and Ferrari, especially for the 2025 season.
Anyway, the next two years at Aston Martin will be the same, for the most part. I am aware that Adrian Newey is exceptional at what he does, but hiring him was still a copycat decision, just like the exclusive engine deal with Honda.
It is what it is.
Fernando Alonso is like Lance Stroll when it comes to making career decisions.
Until next time,
Tara
