A stellar career in karting and a Formula Nissan title earned the Spaniard a test drive for Minardi. On the day he was 1.5 seconds quicker than the other young drivers lined up for the test which also included Marc Gene.
In 2000 he finished fourth in the Formula 3000 championship (at the time the steppingstone to F1) and was signed to race for Minardi in F1 for the 2001 season.
The Minardi PS01, was neither fast nor reliable. However Alonso’s qualifying performance was good, out-qualifying team-mate Tarso Marques by 2.6 seconds on his debut and four races later, at Imola, he out-qualified both Benettons, a feat he repeated later in the season.
The young Spaniard had arrived and suddenly he was hot property as his performances in the Minardi were not going unnoticed. A number of teams were enquiring about him and he was at one point under consideration for a seat at Sauber F1 Team. The drive with the Swiss team went to Felipe Massa…
In 2002, Alonso’s manager Falvio Briatore was tempted to drop Jenson Button from the Benetton line-up but instead made Alonso the team’s test driver. Here the youngster from Oviedo relished the opportunity to spend time testing and gathering track mileage, and this he did racking up almost 8000 km in the cockpit. His work ethic impressed those around him. Alonso also did a test with Jaguar team in May that season.
The following year, 2003, Briatore dropped Button in favour of Alonso ,who joined Jarno Trulli in the team’s new guise as Mild Seven Renault F1 Team – the Renault works effort in their return to the top echelon of the sport.
That year Alonso suffered his biggest accident to date when he crashed at 290 kph crash during the Brazilian Grand Prix. He survived unscathed. A few races later the Spaniard became the youngest driver to achieve a F1 pole position at the Malaysian Grand Prix. He finished second at his home grand prix two races later, and at the time became the youngest driver to win a F1 race at the Hungarian Grand Prix. He finished the year sixth in the championship, with 55 points and four podiums.
In the 2004 season, a win eluded Alonso but he scored podiums in Australia, France, Germany and Hungary. In France he took pole position and finished second, running Michael Schumacher close for victory. He ended the year fourth in the championship standings with 59 points.
From 2000 to the end of 2004 Schumacher and Ferrari had dominated the F1 world championship in commanding fashion, taking five world titles on the trot. The record was about to come to an end.
In 2005 Alonso and Renault brought the red stranglehold on F1 to a halt. The Spaniard won seven times and was on the podium on 15 occasion,s on his way to his first F1 title and bringing an end to the Ferrari/Schumacher incredible run.
Alonso said after claiming his first title, “I just want to dedicate this championship to my family, and all my close friends who have supported me through my career. Spain is not a country with an F1 culture, and we had to fight alone, every step of the way, to make this happen. A huge thank-you should also go to the team as well — they are the best in Formula One, and we have done this together. It will say that I am world champion, but we are all champions — and they deserve this.”
Alonso and Renault were on a role and the Spaniard made it back to back titles as he scored another seven victories en route to the 2006 title. Again defeating his arch rival Schumacher in the Ferrari.
In 2007 Alonso, as world champion, moved to the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team. Hence began a torrid association which only lasted a year and was severely marred by animosity between Alonso, the McLaren management and a precocious talent in the form of Lewis Hamilton. In a season filled with behind the scenes intrigue, politics, accusations, spying, blackmail and non-stop drama it was quite clear that Alonso and McLaren were not meant to be. The Spaniard returned to the comfort of Renault despite four wins and third place in the championship with the Woking team.
The 2008 and 2009 seasons with Renault were poor by Alonso’s standard. The team was no longer the power it was and his one year absence had seen development sink the team to the midfield zone. Thus 35 races over the two years delivered one race win, his controversial “crashgate” victory at the 2009 Singapore GP.
By this point it was no secret that Ferrari was set on obtaining the Spaniard’s services and did so by paying Kimi Raikkonen a substantial amount to leave. The Finn moved on to the World Rally Championship which opened the door for Alonso’s move to Maranello.
The ensuing love affair would do any soap opera proud as Alonso and Ferrari shared a glorious honeymoon, the Spaniard sparing no opportunity to endear himself to the tifosi and Ferrari management. And vice versa.
In 2010, Alonso won his first ever race for Ferrari in Bahrain, and was a title contender to the very last race, scoring five wins and finishing second in the championship. A major gaffe by his team in the final grand prix of the season cost him the title. In a nutshell Alonso started the Abu Dhabi GP with an eight-point lead, and qualified third but a major strategic error saw him finish seventh. Vettel won on the night and became world champion.
For 2011, despite denials by all and sundry, Alonso is the Ferrari team leader and will remain so unless his team mate Felipe Massa can make a huge leap in performance. Alonso’s romance with Ferrari continues as the Spaniard continues to use every opportunity possible to eulogise his team.
As any of the great drivers in modern Formula 1 history, including the likes of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, controversy has followed Alonso along the way.
We highlight some of the controversial moments in his career to date:
• At the 2003 European Grand Prix, David Coulthard and McLaren managing director Martin Whitmarsh accused Alonso of giving Coulthard a brake test. This was in relation to a passage of racing towards the end of the race when Coulthard was trying to overtake Alonso, who was holding him up. Coulthard swerved off the track and into retirement during an attempted overtake. After talking to the drivers and viewing telemetry and video data, the FIA stewards decided that the incident did not warrant any “further judicial action”.
• At the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix, Alonso was involved in an incident in which he brake tested Red Bull Racing test driver Robert Doornbos in the second free practice session. The stewards decided that Alonso’s actions were “unnecessary, unacceptable and dangerous”, and awarded him a one second time penalty to be applied to his fastest lap time in each of the qualifying sessions.
• After a separate incident from the same race, when Michael Schumacher was asked whether he thought Alonso deliberately slowed down so that Schumacher had to pass him under red flags in practice, Schumacher replied, “You said that, I didn’t.”
• In the 2006 Italian Grand Prix, after stewards ruled Alonso had potentially blocked Felipe Massa in Saturday qualifying and relegated him five places on the starting grid, Alonso stated “I love the sport, love the fans coming here — a lot of them from Spain but I don’t consider Formula One like a sport any more”.
• In the qualifying for the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix, while both McLarens were in the pits, Alonso remained stationary in the McLaren pit for a few seconds. This delayed the then provisional pole sitter and team-mate Lewis Hamilton long enough to prevent him from getting another ‘hot lap’ in. Alonso then went on to claim pole. McLaren boss Ron Dennis later said the team had got “out of sequence” when Hamilton did not as agreed allow Alonso past earlier in the qualifying session. He added that Alonso was “under the control of his engineer” when he was waiting in the pit lane. However, Alonso was subsequently given a five-place grid penalty and his McLaren team were docked the 15 constructors’ World Championship points they would have earned in the race.
• As a result of this investigation, it emerged that some team members within McLaren, among them Alonso, were aware of confidential information belonging to the Ferrari team. This information was commented on to Alonso by McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa who had also received information from McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan. The email contained text suggesting that Alonso was surprised by the data and doubted its authenticity. According to the “spygate” related email exchanges between Alonso and de la Rosa, it was clear that Alonso knew about Ferrari’s pit strategies in the Australian Grand Prix and Bahrain Grand Prix. Alonso finished 2nd and 5th respectively in those races. Ron Dennis told the FIA about the case during the Hungarian Grand Prix. Amid media allegations that Alonso threatened Dennis with reporting the team to FIA himself if he was not given number one driver status, Ron Dennis stated in a televised interview that there had been an argument, and that Alonso had said something in the heat of the moment but immediately apologised. This was when Dennis found out about Ferrari data and immediately informed the FIA.
• In what became known in the media as “Crashgate”, Renault allegedly ordered Alonso’s teammate Nelson Piquet, Jr. to crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, causing a safety-car incident at a moment where Alonso would get tremendous benefit from his race strategy, putting him towards the front of the field, and giving him a fighting chance to win the race, after a number of opponents (Felipe Massa, Robert Kubica and Kimi Raikkonen to name a few) suffered. However, the FIA confirmed that no evidence had shown that Alonso had knowledge of the plan, and neither did many of the personal mechanics of both drivers. Piquet has gone on record recently stating that Alonso was not involved and not to blame for the incident.
• In the 2010 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, Alonso became involved in a controversy with team-mate Massa, as Ferrari were accused of using team orders during the race. The incident started when Massa was leading the race and Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley said “Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?”. Shortly after this, Massa slowed down and was overtaken by Alonso in what appeared to be team orders. Shortly after the race notable people of the senior personnel in Ferrari, Massa and Alonso were summoned to the stewards. The matter was then referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council. and Ferrari were given a $100,000 fine but the result of the race was unchanged.
• In the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Alonso was seen gesticulating furiously at Vitaly Petrov on the slowing down lap in front of TV cameras, and initially it seemed that he had blamed the young Russian for costing him the world crown as he ended up being unable to find a way past the Renault driver while race winner Sebastian Vettel was crowned world champion. However, Alonso denied accusations that he had accused him of denying the Spaniard the title.
Photo gallery commemorating Fernando Alonso’s ten years in Formula 1, from his debut at the 2001 Australian GP for Minardi to the last F1 test in Barcelona at the wheel of a Ferrari.
Photo gallery here: Alonso 10 years at the top
Source: YallaF1
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