THANK YOU and see you soon, Fernando! F1 will miss you ...

Jean Todt was interested in him for Ferrari strong> reaching a verbal agreement with Alonso.

Minardi's problems caused them to put Alonso on sale and offered it to Flavio Briatore , as they did with Giancarlo Fisichella . In 2001 he only ran 17 GPs with Minardi and the following year Briatore made him a pilot of Renault , after the purchase of Benetton. After a year as a Renault test driver, he became an official driver in 2003, and there he got his first victory, becoming one of the youngest to win a GP at that time, although after others have taken the record./p>

It was August 24, 2003 in the GP of Hungary, when achieved victory with only 22 years , beating Kimi Räikkönen, Juan Pablo Montoya, Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher.Two years in which he imposed a stratospheric level and when he got his two world titles with the Renault team and that R25 and R26 that were not the best cars on the grid, but the difference was put by Alonso's hands, allowing him to stay ahead of his rivals who had better cars.

Then come that year 2007 that we will all remember , when Fernando Alonso finally had a competitive car, the best car on the grid that allowed him to win the title with ease, but part of the McLaren team, especially Ron Dennis, thought it was better to promote the young rookie driver who sat next to Alonso, a driver who was a fan of Fernando himself, Lewis Hamilton. That cost them a series of disqualifications, leaks and internal tensions that ended with the points tie of both pilots, the declassification of McLaren of the world for espionage to Ferrari and the gift of that year's world title to Kimi ...

After breaking his contract with McLaren and returning one year to Renault, to a very uncompetitive Renault, he spent a few bad years in Renault with cars that were the worst on the grid, with very little downforce and that did not give him what Alonso really wanted. But it was a moment of transition, since his head was betting on red, because he wanted the Maranello guys to sign him up to be able to fly for Ferrari, another of his dreams ...

There in Ferrari was five years , five years in a Ferrari that was not what it used to be, and that they could not make a competitive car. It was Fernando himself who saved the most complete ridiculous red cars, taking them beyond where they could really get for their benefits. Being a runner-up in the F1 world for several years with these cars that sometimes were not even on the podium in the performance ranking of the cars and even came to fight two years until the last race for the World Championship, leading it in points by his masterful performances against the all-powerful and "allegorical" Red Bull.

But the world did not come with Ferrari and Fernando began to tire, so he groped the market and decided to change to another project that seemed promising, but that finally was a total failure. 2014 would be the last year at Ferrari, passing in 2015 to join again McLaren , this time with its partnership with Honda after breaking with Mercedes as a supplier of engines. But what seemed like a successful binomial ended up as we all know about the reliability and power problems of the Japanese engine ...

Three years with McLaren-Honda that ended with Alonso's patience and also with the McLaren team itself, leading them to make a decision in my risky and erroneous opinion, after breaking with Honda and becoming a Renault customer. They lost an important sponsor, a large amount of money, to become customers, pay for the engines and plunge into a major economic crisis. All to have a Gallic engine that has shown that it is the worst with the Honda, only that it seems that Honda is taking giant steps this 2018 and Renault does not find that which makes them closer to Ferrari and Mercedes.

As we have seen, the MCL33 with Renault has given a step back , the engine is not to blame, in this case it seems that at the beginning of the year the Renault was better than the Honda, but the adaptation has made them pay a price and the chassis/aerodynamics they are optimized, making a car even worse at the aerodynamic level than the MCL32.He also competed in the Nation Autosport team of his boss Zak Brown in the 24 hours of Daytona, in preparation for the world endurance WEC 2018 with the Toyota TS050, this time, a dominant car for the first time in the career of Alonso and that will probably lead him to win the World Cup after having also won 24 Hours of Le Mans .

That brings you closer to the Triple Crown , which only needs to earn Indy 500 for it. The lack of motivation within F1 has led to this, and not only because of not having a competitive car, that this can change from one year to another, and has even had offers from the third in discord as he has said (Red Bull), but the competition has become boring with those GPs of Monaco where they make a train those in front running several seconds slower than they can really, with the races where it is impossible to overtake, with predictable races with the total domination of Mercedes and Ferrari, with those circuits of Tilke that are all similar and remove the magic of the classics, ...

Well also see Alonso with the NASCAR and that Car exchange with American legend Jimmie Johnson. And now that? Well, I suppose that F1 will not be the same without Fernando Alonso, maybe many will miss him, but there is life beyond F1 as we can see in the WEC, in Indy and also in those mythical careers that Fernando prepares for 2019 and has not yet said what they will be but have all the networks disturbed by what is being forged ...

And that is to be the best, since F1 does not he has returned what he deserves, since he has not won 7 or more world championships, he will have to keep fighting, he will not have rest to show the world of motorsport that he really is THE BEST. Some statistical analyzes of prestigious universities where they remove the car factor to really determine the quality of the pilot already place Fernando Alonso as the 4th (after Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher and ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Alberto Ascari), and others as 5th (after Fangio, Prost, Clark and Senna, but ahead of Piquet, Stewart, Schumacher, Fittipaldi, Vettel, ...). And they are not just universities alonsistas ...

Even some British media, little suspected of being alonists, also claim that Fernando is probably the best of last century of F1. Examples of this are the Fox, BBC, The Drive, and many other media, ... Even the Italians have been very active acclaiming Alonso after the disastrous world of Vettel that has led them to lose the championship having the best car. And Alonso himself predicted it, when his rivals do not have the most competitive car and fight for important things, then they will prove they are good drivers. Lewis Hamilton has done it, and has earned the respect of Alonso and Alonso himself has said several times.While other drivers like Michael Schumacher work a lot to develop the car and adjust all the mechanics to their needs and are a ten in that, but have many other weaknesses, or as Lewis Hamilton is the best classifier of the current grid, being faster even than Alonso in qualifying, but he has other weaknesses, ... In the case of Fernando Alonso he may not be as good as Schumi in that, he may not be as fast as Hamilton in a lap, but he has practically no weaknesses and is almost the best in everything, which makes the most complete of the grid .

If you look at the diagram in the image above you will see that other pilots can have a diagram of performance similar to a star, highlighting in some specific points as I said. But if the graph was made for Fernando Alonso, it would be almost a circle , because it is good practically in everything, although it does not stand out in anything in particular, which makes it almost perfect. The Andrea Stella , an engineer who knows him very closely from Ferrari, has said it that way. He has been in charge of making some statements lately in which he compares him with other pilots that he has also known, like Michael ...

Also Mark Temple (Alonso's career engineer at McLaren) and Will Joseph (Alonso's performance engineer at McLaren) have said it on other occasions, and even the good Joan Villadelprat :

• Joan Villadelprat : " Prioriza. He says: 'You have to concentrate on tuning the car for this and this curve. Forget the rest, I'll take care of it ".
• Mark Temple :" Think a lot about other things while driving, on things that go beyond the immediate return He often asks me things about the strategy that show it very clearly. That incredible global consciousness is a strength that has always had, that ability to drive very fast, with very few errors, while thinking about the race in its entirety, and management. [...] He is able to extract the maximum all the time and in a different way. [...] When he has been slower than his training partner, for example, it is invariably because he has exceeded the limit that is demanded, not because he has stayed below. [...] He likes to attack and be aggressive at the entrance of the curve, that is one of his strengths. Thus he is able to maintain a lot of speed in the corners and attack in some circuits, like Singapore, where he is tremendously strong. [...] Fernando has a style of piloting great adaptability. The way you have to adapt to a car, a track or a tire is impressive. [...] He will come and tell you: 'I think the problem is this'. You look at the data and say: 'I do not see it'. And it's because he's adapting to that problem. This is how he manages to save the limitations, but it does not mean that the problem is not there, it is difficult to see. Sometimes, if you look at your first few turns, when you have not yet found the limit, that is when you often see that the problem has manifested itself for the first time in the data. [...] The truly incredible thing about him is that he is very strong in all areas. He is able to identify areas of weakness and think about them, work on them and minimize them. ".
• Will Joseph :" Is he another pilot? No, absolutely not. It is very clear that it is at a different level compared to others I have worked with (Hamilton, Pérez, ...). It is capable of assimilating a lot of information, which is truly incredible. He cares about the smallest details. It is very refreshing and changes the way you work. ".
• Andrea Stella :" The process of being humble is what characterizes Alonso. [...] The essence of its qualities is that it is very complete. You suffer to detect a weakness in terms of skills.[...] Each pilot is committed. Each pilot will tell you 'I am the most committed' but it is difficult for Fernando to accept that he is slower than someone. It is something that is in his nature, that could have created problems when he was not mature enough to manage this fundamental aspect of his identity. To manage this internal characteristic, you have to develop as a human and you also need people in your environment to help you do that. [...] If we talk about qualities that Fernando has, in which he is not the best, I think Michale maybe was the best in some of them, but in others he was weaker than Fernando. Michael would be more like a star, while Fernando is more like a perfect circle, but perhaps not with the excellence that some pilots may have shown in certain aspects. Michael was an attack pilot. He faced things from beyond the limit. Fernando is more than going from below to the limit. So, for example, the ability to drive a car with oversteer from Michael was incredible, but sometimes this became his weakness because he was driving such an oversteer car in training that when the classification came, if he pushed 1% more, I would have too much oversteer or too much tire degradation during the race. With Michael the engineers had to take an active role to try to control their capabilities and say 'how are you going to do this and where does the car do that? We need more of the car and less of you. ' Fernando understands his own limits better, he is very good at understanding what he helps and how the car helps. You can prepare the car for the race very well thanks to this. Another interesting difference is that Michael was very analytical and dialectical. We spent a lot of time talking about the car. Fernando is a concise person. When he returns to the garage, in the first three words of his comments, he has expressed 95% of what he means. With Michael, the technique was more about filtering the essence of the details. With Fernando it is a matter of asking the right questions to get a detailed picture of the scene. His sensitivity with the car is exceptional. It's just a matter of where you feel comfortable as a pilot. He feels comfortable if he knows that we are attacking 90% of the problem. "
• Pedro de la Rosa : what to say ... there is no more than vel when analyzing the turns subjective, when it tells you how to shorten and travel less distance in the circuits than other pilots by its way of shortening in the curves, how it advances, how it closes the gaps to not be ahead, how it pilots under rain, how it saves fuel without losing too much time , ...

Despite that, there are many critical voices that say that when you win you do it because you have the best car and when you lose because you also have the best car but you can not drive ... that's how we are in Spain , that we do not value ours and prefer to praise or value only the outside ... Ahh if we were concerned so much about fostering national talent and creating opportunities for ours as well as criticism and the stupidity ... !! How much better we would go!

And I say goodbye, THANK YOU Fernando , I hope that outside of F1 you have a much more promising future.

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