Why would Aston Martin invest in a 41-year-old driver who has not taken a race victory in almost ten years and whose last world championship came before Lewis Hamilton made his grand prix debut?
But with Fernando Alonso continuing to race such a high level in Formula 1, the right question to ask would be ‘why not?’.
Alonso’s reputation as one of the elite drivers in the field has been influenced as much by Alonso himself and his army of adoring fans as it has his genuine prowess on the track. But looking at Alonso’s 2022 results on paper, it might be difficult to tell why he deserves such a high ranking – especially so far above his team mate. However, Alonso’s second and final year as an Alpine driver was one where the regular laments over misfortunes that has become such a trademark of his was fairly justified.
It was not the strongest opening to the season for Alonso. Despite heading into Bahrain benefiting from Alpine’s first set of upgrades before his team mate did, he could not match Ocon’s pace in the race and was fortunate that Red Bull’s retirements enabled him to take any points at all.
In Jeddah, Ocon out-qualified him by less than a tenth and then proceeded to fight so hard to keep Alonso behind him in the early laps of the race it was as if the pair were fighting for the championship. After eventually clearing his team mate, Alonso was struck by his first car failure of the season when his Alpine overheated, forcing him into retirement.
In Melbourne, Alonso was just plain fast. In the top five of every session from second practice onwards, he breezed into Q3 before setting a purple middle sector on his first flying lap of the final phase. Then, his hydraulics failed him under braking for turn 11, ending his session in the gravel trap and leaving him tenth on the grid. In the race, his ambitious strategy on the hard tyre was heavily compromised early on, a Safety Car scuppered his chances of a recovery and he was forced to pit a second time, dropping him to 17th.
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Alonso was comfortably quicker than Ocon across Imola but dropped from fifth on the sprint race grid to ninth for the grand prix. When the grand prix began he was hit by Mick Schumacher at the first chicane, wounding his car so much that Alpine called him in to retire.
But after three weekends of misfortune, he…
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