Can Former F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso Once Again Taste Glory?

The immensely wide Pirelli tires are wrestled off and toted away for immediate analysis before Fernando Alonso even clambers out of his Aston Martin Formula 1 car. His helmet's visor hides his face, but as he glides through the British marque’s pit lane garage, his posture doesn't indicate that he's downtrodden.

One would presume he is. Setbacks mounted over the Spanish driver's weekend. A slow practice session left Alonso stuck in the pits during system tweaks as the team tested out a new brake system for his AMR23 car. He finished 14th place finish in the sprint race, a short race ahead of the Grand Prix where drivers can score valuable points. His qualifying session culminated in starting the race from the garage due to frantic debugging of lingering brake issues.

The bulk of the 42-year-old’s 2023 season has been smashingly good. He snagged third place in the first three races. Then, notched another five podiums, placing him within striking distance of third place in the overall championship battle. But then came a withdrawal from the Singapore race, followed by eighth place in Japan, and sixth place in Qatar. And now, struggles in Texas.

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Alonso likes to win, as evidenced by his back-to-back F1 world championships in the mid-aughts. But poor track conditions have been beating up the cars' undercarriages, causing issues for his team. F1 rules restrict how low the car can hang above the ground. Pit crews attach skid blocks underneath the vehicle as an indicator, but according to Aston Martin’s driver coach Pedro de la Rosa, managing those rectangular wood planks has been tricky. “Wear too much away and you won’t pass inspection after the race,” de la Rosa says, adding that Mike Krack—Aston Martin F1’s team principal—and crew are batting around potential solutions.

Despite the setbacks, Krack says morale is good. “It’s always difficult to start the season well and then move down in order. But Fernando isn’t getting discouraged by a single event. He sees that we’re on the path of turning it around.”

Push, Push, Push

Sunday morning arrives. Engineers and garage technicians toil away on the AMR23’s brakes. One tech grinds the left rear wheel on the car of Alonso’s teammate, Lance Stroll. (Stroll’s father, billionaire fashion magnate Lawrence, bought a controlling stake in Aston Martin in 2020, subsequently fielding the F1 team starting in 2021. Though rumors emerged last month that the elder Stroll may look to sell the team.) Alonso’s bay is equally abuzz.

The green light blinks on and the field roars down the track, up the hill to the first corner of the race. Alonso tears out of his garage and gets to work. He soon slices up his way into the top 10—point-scoring positions. With seven laps left, he looks solid. Suddenly, Alonso tells his team that the car is damaged, and he has to stop. Aston’s team is crushed. It’s his second DNF in four races. (Stroll finishes 9th, earning his first points in six races.)

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“There was a piece of the floor missing from the right hand side,” Krack says after the race. Alonso could feel the discord in the suspension, even through the computer detected nothing, Krack says. He points to the high curbs and continuous strikings as the culprit. (Incidentally, both Lewis Hamilton, who finished second, and Charles LeClerc, who finished fifth, were disqualified days later for having skid blocks that were too worn to pass inspection.)

“Normally, drivers are the most sensitive to performance,” Krack continues, “To start from the pits and get to the points and then not finish, it’s frustrating. But Fernando knows these things happen.” He also notes that the DNF didn’t appear to dampen Alonso’s drive.

Alonso, per Krack, plays a pivotal role in pushing the team forward. “You go into a briefing or a post-race meeting and Fernando brings a list of things to discuss,” Krack says. Those welcomed ideas can be about the car itself, team protocols, or strategy. The team has implemented Alonso’s suggestions numerous times, showing the veteran's value even outside the driver's seat.

Sim Testing for Tenths

Since his arrival to Aston Martin for the 2023 season, Alonso’s been heavily ensconced in simulator testing. He and Stroll log countless hours in the sim seat, sampling multiple improvement options in a dizzying array of conditions, all in an undying bid for that extra tenth of a second. Because some of its F1 engineers also develop Aston's top echelon road cars, there’s an osmosis of the knowledge between road and track. And, because it’s a sim, the F1 drivers can try road cars that are under development, such as Aston’s forthcoming Valhalla hybrid hypercar.

The Valhalla's 1,012-horsepower monster is powered by a twin-electric motors, complimenting a twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 from Mercedes-AMG. Crossover development engineers are extremely keen to receive feedback from Alonso and Stroll.

“Fernando’s a race car driver, so he will focus his feedback on how to make any car the fastest it can be,” says Aston’s Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman. “It's important that you don't just make a road car feel like a race car, though, because no one would buy it. So we say, right, on the extreme setting of Sport-Plus-Plus, we can do exactly what those guys want. And then dial back from that to get the Valhalla to be a compliant road car.” Krack echoes that sentiment: “No driver will ever tell you to make an improvement for reliability.”

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The most valuable feedback an F1 driver can give an engineer fine-tuning a car? “Excitement,” says Reichman. “If those guys get out of the sim smiling, that’s the best case.” Proof: while Alonso wasn’t at Aston while its DBX707 utility vehicle was being developed, he hot-shoed it around a circuit, hopped out, approached the small coterie of Aston engineers and executives, and grinned. “This doesn’t drive like an SUV,” he told them.

Indeed. We sampled the 707-hp V-8 super-ute on the way to Austin’s track and found it impressively quick and compliant for a 4,940-pound four-door. Reichman has a better story: “Fernando took me for a very hot lap in the 707 and, as my knuckles got whiter, he just smiled more.”

Win Sunday, Sell Monday...Hopefully

Funding Aston’s F1 team isn’t cheap. Some unconfirmed rumors say that Lawrence Stroll has pumped more than a half-billion dollars into the endeavor. Whatever the sum, there needs to be an ROI, which means the team needs to do well enough to attract earned media, extra eyeballs, and all the accompanying hype.

The brand claims it’s nascent reentry into F1 is going well. “We see a 20 percent spike on our virtual car configurator during [F1] race weekends,” says Marco Mattiacci, Aston’s chief brand officer. Whether those interested F1 fans turn into Aston Martin customers remains to be seen. (And production line hiccups need to be mitigated to meet any higher demand.)

What’s clear is the more Alonso sprays champagne atop a podium, the better. Following the Austin Grand Prix, neither Alonso nor Stroll finished the Mexico City Grand Prix—sidelined by debris and a crash, respectively. But Alonso’s mojo returned for the Brazilian Grand Prix, where he finished third.

Heading into Las Vegas Grand Prix, the second to last race of the season, Alonso has a serious shot at third place in the season. And Aston Martin is closely battling McLaren for fourth in the constructor series, too.

Finishing Up Strong in Sin City

Ask what it’ll take to for Alonso to achieve that desirable result, and Krack doesn’t hesitate: “It’s very easy; we need a car that’s consistently able to score points and move higher up.” Simple enough in theory; more difficult in reality.

Learning from past maladies is key to advancing the car’s potential. For example, after the Austin Grand Prix brake setbacks, Krack issued an edict that the team will never rollout a new system on weekends with sprint races, as there are too many uncertainties to work through and less time to do so. “The more new bits you try, the higher the risk,” Krack admits. “And you have to be careful how much you rely on the sim.”

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“For example, when we were practicing in the simulator for the Qatar Grand Prix, we had good indications of our set up,” explains Krack. “Then we got there and the asphalt had been renewed, and our cars started drastically differently than in the simulation and nothing works anymore. You need to do validation loops to get as close as possible to your simulation data to trust it more.”

To remain in the hunt for third place in the season, Alonso needs an exceedingly strong finish at this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. “Las Vegas is a big unknown,” Krack says. “No one’s ever raced there, so we have no data on the track, including how the asphalt will be, how the cold temperature will affect the cars. We need to be careful with our changes, to reduce risk.”

Ask how Alonso and team Aston will fare in Sin City and Krack cracks a joke. “It can only be great, because in Las Vegas, everything is great, right? Nothing’s on a small scale there.”

Update: With ninth and seventh-place finishes in the final races of the year, Alonso claiming fourth overall, while Aston Martin had to settle for fifth among Constructors.