Fernando Alonso

In March 2001, Fernando Alonso drove a barely competitive Minardi from 19th on the grid at Melbourne. The car was overweight and had no power steering. That afternoon he beat drivers with much faster cars and left the pit wall team stunned.

Flavio Briatore saw the commercial potential before anyone else and decided to back him. After a full year as a test driver in 2002, he racked up thousands of kilometers in private testing without making much media noise.

Nobody handed out seats in the elite.

So Renault gave him the starting seat for the 2003 campaign. In August of that same year he reached the top step of the podium at the Hungarian Grand Prix at twenty-two years and twenty-six days old, after lapping the legendary Michael Schumacher on track.

The boy from Oviedo versus the German giant

Formula 1 had been dominated for five years by Ferrari's technical tyranny. But the Asturian driver broke the mold in 2005 thanks to an aggressive driving style that punished the front tires to gain traction out of the slow corners.

In September 2005, he finished third at the Interlagos circuit and clinched the world title. In 2006 he retained the crown against a fired-up Schumacher, holding on through mechanical pressure until the German's engine failed at Suzuka.

And glory brought an immediate clash of egos. His move to McLaren for the 2007 season sparked a civil war inside the team with rookie Lewis Hamilton and with team boss Ron Dennis. The team's garage erupted at Hungaroring after a deliberate block in the pit lane that finished off the team's internal harmony.

That falling-out benefited Kimi Räikkönen and ended up in the sporting courts. The FIA fined McLaren $100 million over the technical espionage case involving Ferrari.

The Maranello labyrinth and the English penance

Alonso spent two gray seasons back at Renault before donning the red overalls. In 2010 he arrived at Ferrari as the project's undisputed leader.

The plan looked foolproof. He won on his debut in Bahrain and went into the season finale in Abu Dhabi with a 15-point lead over Sebastian Vettel. But a monumental strategy blunder from the pit wall left him stuck for forty laps behind Vitaly Petrov's Renault.

Frustration consumed five years of effort.

During that Italian chapter he collected runner-up finishes in 2010, 2012 and 2013 against Red Bull cars that were clearly superior. The Maranello car rarely managed to qualify on the front row. The split with the Italians came at the end of 2014, amid silent recriminations and mutual wear that no longer allowed for a truce.

His return to McLaren in 2015 with Honda bordered on the grotesque. At Suzuka he yelled over the radio that his engine was GP2-level while rival cars passed him on the straights.

Platform cameras and the refuge of endurance racing

Far from giving up, he sought refuge in disciplines outside the Grand Prix circus. He won the French endurance classic, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in 2018 and 2019 with the Toyota team, and added the FIA World Endurance Championship title.

He also explored recording studios. In 2011 he lent his voice to the Spanish dub of the animated film Cars 2 and repeated the experience in 2017 on the Disney Pixar production Cars 3.

In 2020 Amazon Prime Video premiered the documentary series Fernando, which chronicled his Dakar Rally debut and the agony of failing to qualify for the 500 Indianapolis 500. The camera laid bare the obsessive temperament of a competitor who cannot handle defeat at any table.

Retirement was never a real option.

In 2021 he returned to Formula 1 with Alpine and reached the podium at Losail. In 2023 he joined Aston Martin and scored eight podiums in a single season with a car that surprised the championship's giants.

In April 2024 he signed a multi-year extension with the Silverstone team to compete through 2026, with a base salary of more than €18 million a year, while the team was finishing construction of its own wind tunnel valued at over €200 million.