At the end of another draining day Fernando Alonso has one last gauntlet to face. As the winter sun fades across an empty track at Jerez, an hour south of Seville, a chattering throng of men and women huddle outside the Ferrari garage. They are Italian and Spanish; and their fervour is uniform.When the door finally opens, and the two-time world champion and new star of Ferrari emerges, they engulf him. Alonso has worked relentlessly all day, completing 132 laps of testing in a car that has encouraged many bookmakers to install him as a narrow favourite to win this year's drivers' championship. Yet his walk to the Ferrari motorhome looks more taxing.
The 28-year-old smiles politely, stopping every few steps to accept an embrace from a Spanish supporter or to have his photograph taken alongside an entranced Italian fan, but his relief is obvious when he escapes. In an office tucked away at the back of Ferrari's gleaming enclave, Alonso shakes his head. He might have won successive titles for Renault – in 2005 and 2006 – and been subsequently embroiled in the "Spygate" and "Crashgate" controversies that scarred Formula One, but driving for Ferrari is an unusually intense experience.
"My father always told me this would happen," Alonso remembers. "He said, 'If you race for Ferrari then you can retire. Your life is complete.' So after I won my two championships for Renault I said, 'I'm happy now – my career is complete.' And he said, 'No, no, if you drive for Ferrari people will forget the championships. They will remember you as a Ferrari driver.' I said, 'OK, Papa, we'll see.' Now I think he was right. Ferrari gives you a special feeling."
A low-key day of testing offers only a fleeting snapshot of all that awaits Alonso when the new season starts two weeks on Sunday in Bahrain. At least he is suitably equipped to withstand the scrutiny, for he has galvanised a previously non-existent Spanish zeal for Formula One. His fame now prevents him from living in Spain but Alonso derives real pride from the fact that 36,400 fans watched him dominate a routine practice day at Valencia this month, outnumbering those who had attended last year's Turkish grand prix.
"It was a hard battle when I started," Alonso says. "There was nothing. When I raced at Minardi in my first year [2001] my family had to watch me on German TV. In Spain there were no TV rights for Formula One. Now I think the attention on me here will go up even more. But the biggest difficulty will be outside Spain. When I race in Australia or Korea or Japan I know it will be a big change for me because Ferrari fans are worldwide. It's very nice if you win but it's not so good if you lose. All this is part of being a Ferrari driver."
Alonso believes his bruising experience in 2007, when partnering an apparently favoured rookie in Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, will help him to adapt to Ferrari's pressurised environment. "2007 was very difficult but I learnt a lot personally. It was good for my career to take that step of joining them and growing up. I learnt how to work with a team and also to withstand the media pressure. The difficulties I had were coming from the team and the media. Now I am much more prepared for everything in Formula One – and in life as well.
"But at the time McLaren and Ferrari were fighting each other and it was very close. In the end I think we had the better car but we finished second and third [with Hamilton and Alonso both just one point behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen]. Unfortunately we did something wrong."
Bitter infighting cost McLaren the championship, while an engineer's appropriation of technical data from Ferrari almost brought down the entire company. "With the spy history I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Alonso says. "But I was very happy to help the FIA discover everything."
As a result McLaren were excluded from that season's constructors' championship and were fined a record $100m. And last year, even more damagingly, it was proved that Alonso's team-mate at Renault, Nelson Piquet Jr, had crashed his car deliberately at the 2008 Singapore grand prix. That blatant cheating forced the introduction of a safety car, and Alonso was the unwitting beneficiary as he went on to win the race.
Alonso's position was muddied further by the fact that Flavio Briatore, Renault's team principal, was his manager. Briatore has just won an appeal against his permanent expulsion from the sport but Alonso agrees that "it was a bad season for F1 last year". He adds: "Crashgate was not easy. Flavio is a friend. I have been working with him many years now. So for all the [legal] decisions that go well for him I am happy. But I don't know everything about his case."
Does he expect Briatore to return to the sport? Alonso looks down and shrugs. "I have no idea." Surely he was shocked that Briatore, Renault's chief engineer, Pat Symonds, and Piquet could resort to such squalid and dangerous tactics? "It is in the past," Alonso murmurs evasively.
But Felipe Massa, his new team-mate at Ferrari, remains mortified that the debacle cost him the 2008 drivers' title by a single point. Has he discussed the implications of Crashgate with Massa? "No," Alonso says. That answer is predictable – especially against a typically gossipy Formula One backdrop which implies that the relationship between Alonso and Massa is strained. "People are only writing these things because they know we are very strong. Felipe and I work for the team."
They have, however, had many fierce battles in the past. "I have the same with everybody else," he smiles. "After so many years of course I have battled with Felipe. It's the way it is – and we'll keep having these fights. But Michael Schumacher and [Nico] Rosberg will have fights at Mercedes. I am sure Lewis and Jenson Button will have fights. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel will have fights at Red Bull – in fact they were fighting last year already. But no one talks about this. They talk about it with Ferrari because we are in a good position."
Button, like Alonso, arrived at McLaren as the reigning world champion and it is easy to imagine tensions between him and Hamilton. "We'll see," Alonso says. "Obviously I don't know how McLaren is now but if he arrived in my time then, for sure, it would be very tough for him. But, hopefully, it's now better for Jenson because I learned a lot from that season and McLaren did as well."
The return of Schumacher will be as intriguing a sub-plot as the rivalries within McLaren and Ferrari. "I was very surprised when I first heard Michael was coming back. But our lives are so intense that when you are at home it's difficult to get used to a normal life. So if you get an opportunity to come back after three years maybe you can't say no. And it's true that since Michael left I haven't won any championships. So hopefully this is a good sign for me. Maybe there is some relationship between Michael and my success."
Alonso's good humour can be attributed to the fact that he believes his Ferrari is the best car he has ever driven – and that he has escaped a dispiriting situation at Renault where, last year, he finished a distant ninth in the championship. "I knew I was only fighting for seventh or eighth but it was important to learn from that. I have no doubt I am a better driver now."
He is also stimulated by his outside interest in creating a new Tour de France team with his friend Alberto Contador, who won the race in 2007 and 2009. "It's a project for me – a kind of dream I have because I love cycling. Creating a top team and being in a position to win the Tour de France will give me a nice feeling. But I know it is not easy to create a top team from zero. You need good riders, good staff, a lot of preparation and, most important, a lot of sponsors. So I don't think we are in the right moment to start a project like this, because of the world economy."
Would he wait until he has retired from Formula One before he attempts to fulfil his Tour fantasy? "No, it can happen at the same time. It is something Alberto and I can work on. As I said I'm very open. I know this year he is with Astana but from next year onwards, for sure, if there is an opportunity I will be very interested. I think he will be interested as well."
Did he train alongside the remorseless Contador in the winter? "He invited me to train with him a couple of times but I was always trying to have something else to do that day! I trained with the Olympic champion Samuel Sánchez, who is from my city [Ovideo], and with some of Alberto's team‑mates from Astana."
Before he can chase down a possible Tour triumph as a team director, Alonso looks ready for the most absorbing Formula One season in years. "I expect Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull to be big contenders. But we are very happy where we are at Ferrari."
Even some British bookmakers have made him favourite for the title, ahead of the last two world champions in Hamilton and Button. Would it be wise to put a bet on him? Alonso laughs and stretches out his hand. "Put the money on me now…"
Source: The Guardian
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