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Fernando Alonso’s rivals in The Race Legends Trophy last year were convinced he was playing mind games with them by hiding his pace in practice.
And half a year on, the double Formula 1 world champion has admitted they were right – though he insists he was doing it in a different way to had been suggested.
Alonso is back in simracing this weekend to race a WTF1 backed car in the iRacing Daytona 24 Hours ahead of his return to F1 with the Alpine team.
Although he wasn’t a Legends Trophy champion – having joined midway through season two and then lost out to Juan Pablo Montoya in the season three title decider due to a first corner pile-up at Le Mans – Alonso had a dominant spell in the middle of the esports series for motorsport superstars created during the first lockdown.
He took five consecutive wins across season two’s Indianapolis oval double-header, the following two Silverstone races, and the Monaco opener in the Triple Crown themed third season.
And it was following the Silverstone weekend that British Touring Car star Jason Plato suggested on The Race Esports Podcast that “cheeky monkey” Alonso had been toying with the opposition by deliberating getting all his practice lap times disallowed so no one knew his real pace.
“We’d all sussed out what he was doing,” said Plato.
“In the last corner he was going completely off-track so the lap was disallowed. “Therefore it didn’t hit the timing screens, but nevertheless, he knows what his laptime is.
“And he was doing this on purpose so nobody knew what his pace was!”
“Fernando’s a strange cat, and he’s bloody good.
“It probably had the effect he wanted, in that we were all going, ‘what were you doing that for?!’”
Half a year later, Alonso has finally come clean about his mischievous tactics.
Appearing on the WTF1 podcast alongside his Daytona team-mate Rubens Barrichello and Tony Kanaan, who is driving another WTF1 car in the GT class, Alonso was adamant he hadn’t tried any mind games until the season three Monaco round.
“It was the case in Monaco actually, not in the other places, but in Monaco – yes,” he said.
He explained that he had worked out while using the practice server that no one else was within 3s of his lap times, which made him think “this is not possible”, and then became aware that his rivals were watching his driving for tips, so decided to try to mislead them.
“So I was doing the first sector fast and the second sector slow and things like that,” said Alonso.
“I knew, because I had some calls, that people were watching my onboard when I was on track. So they’d stopped, they were on the pitlane.
“I noticed that because I was going on track and there were like 20 cars working and then when I was on track there were like three cars on track and 17 on the pitlane.
“I knew that they were watching. So I was doing funny things and strange lines.”
Alonso duly crushed the field from pole in the first Monaco race.
But that was where his winning run ended, as he got caught up in multiple incidents in the reversed-grid leg – including one that sent him briefly upside down – and could only reach third as Andy Priaulx claimed victory.
