Fernando Alonso heads to his home grand prix with the hope of energising his championship charge on the European leg of the F1 season, and if ever there was a stage for turning in a performance worthy a world champion, it’s Circuit de Catalunya.
After winning his first race for Ferrari (albeit with a little assistance from a duff spark plug on Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull), many Formula One followers – let alone Fernando fans – expected the Spaniard to establish a winning routine this season. After two years at the struggling Renault team, Alonso was finally at the wheel of a competitive car again and everyone was looking forward to seeing him duke it out with Vettel, Webber, Hamilton, Button and even renewing his rivalry with his old foe Schumi.
Sadly, Alonso has rarely been at the front of the field since Bahrain, and he did himself no favour by jumping the start of the recent Chinese Grand Prix… it was an uncharacteristic error from the man from Oviedo. It is true that Alonso has driven with great verve when untroubled by engine or gearbox maladies, or stuck behind his plucky Brazilian team-mate… but he’s been struggling to put together winning performances.
Recently he’s been in the news because Spanish bank Santander had insured his thumbs for ten million Euro and he was quoted as saying “I knew that Santander is the best bank in the world but now I have also discovered that they are leaders in insurance”. When asked what it means to drive for the Scuderia, Alonso glibly proclaimed: “Ferrari is much more: it’s a passion, a philosophy, a way of life. I’m contaminated by this emotion.”
Goodness me. I know that “sound byte generation” is a crucial part of the modern grand prix driver’s job description, but I have been watching the sport long enough to know that once a driver becomes a talking head and PR pony his best driving days are behind him.
But not Alonso’s, surely… It irks me that the Spaniard has had to explain himself repeatedly after he barged past Massa at the entry to the pitlane during the Shanghai Grand Prix. The Ferrari team management has been at pains to say everything is hunky dory between its drivers and that everyone’s “playing nice”… but that’s a hangover from the Schumacher/Barrichello days when Rubinho had to shut up and toe the line.
I want to see Alonso and Massa bang wheels and then have a heated row en route to the podium ceremony (as they so famously did in the aftermath of the European Grand Prix in 2007). I don’t want to read about what the Spaniard thinks of his bank or his “emotional contamination” with Ferrari… Instead I would like Fernando to challenge team boss Stefano Domenicali in the press and demand better machinery in a similar way to which he chided former boss Flavio Briatore when the Spaniard accused Renault of dropping the ball during the latter half of the 2006 season. That showed real fire!
I don’t know when Alonso will firmly establish himself as Ferrari’s number one driver (or put Massa in his place, to be frank) and it’s unclear whether that will happen out on the race track or behind the closed doors of a pit garage.
What I can say without a doubt is that Alonso will have few better opportunities to show us what he’s truly made of than his home grand prix in Barcelona this weekend. I hope he’ll make me smile, but I fear McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Massa might have other ideas.
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