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Fernando Alonso wants to resume his quest “to be hopefully the most complete driver in motorsport ever” when his current Formula 1 comeback ends.
The 2005/06 F1 world champion began his mission to explore the rest of the motorsport universe while still racing for McLaren in 2017, when he skipped the Monaco Grand Prix to contest IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500.
Having declared he wanted to complete a ‘triple crown’ by adding Indy 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours victories to his Monaco Grand Prix wins in F1, Alonso has since made two further Indy attempts and was part of Toyota’s World Endurance Championship team for the 2018/19 season.
Alongside team-mates Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, Alonso won the WEC title as well as two Le Mans.
Widening his remit beyond the triple crown, he also contested the 2020 Dakar Rally with Toyota and won the 2019 Daytona 24 Hours as part of the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac team with Renger van der Zande, Jordan Taylor and Kamui Kobayashi.
Those adventures were paused when he secured an F1 return with Alpine for 2021, and he is set to continue there through 2022 – with the second year of his original ‘one + one’ contract a formality.
The 40-year-old is open to extending his F1 return even further, but should that not be possible, he plans to get back on with his wider mission.
“There are people that want to see new names, they want to see new hopes, they want to get rid of some of the normal names that they see every weekend,” Alonso told selected media including The Race.
“But I see myself [racing] a very long time. If it’s in Formula 1, great.
“If not in Formula 1 I will try to pursue some of the remaining challenges outside Formula 1, to be hopefully the most complete driver in motorsport ever.”
The Race says
Matt Beer
I’m glad Alonso’s widened his remit to the more general ‘most complete driver ever’ concept and is writing his own rules.
Because realistically, his chances of winning most of the non-F1 events he tackles are going to be limited without investing a few years in each to master their intricacies sufficiently to properly take on the experienced genre specialists.
Alonso has been enormously impressive in all the missions he’s tackled, his work ethic and humility as important in that as his driving talent and racecraft.
But since his very strong Indy debut, he’s failed to qualify once and then been an uncompetitive 21st. He was 13th on the Dakar, nearly five minutes off winner Carlos Sainz Sr.
And during his WEC stint, Toyota effectively had no opposition as it was the last factory LMP1 team remaining.
None of which is meant to diminish what Alonso’s achieved – more to say that given the level of specialism across all of motorsport, we should be measuring his achievements in more nuanced ways than race or rally wins.
He’s indicated that Indy and Dakar remain unfinished business. And while it’s easy and tempting to draw up a big wishlist of events we’d each love to see Alonso try, realistically he’s already picked well in terms of choosing the relatively achievable ones and it’s hard to see how and where he’d venture beyond them.
The World Rally Championship has two famous classics again now that the Safari has returned to join the Monte Carlo on the calendar. But Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica’s experiences show how tough the WRC is to master without having grown up on the stages.
The Macau Grand Prix would require Alonso to be up for junior single-seaters (or TCR touring cars if the Guia race crown will do). The Daytona 500 is a huge ask with limited superspeedway experience and none in stock cars.
Australia’s Supercars have proved almost near impossible for outsiders to master to a decent standard, so the Bathurst 1000 would be far from straightforward to conquer. The Formula Ford Festival is just my personal fetish whenever famous drivers talk about guesting in big events elsewhere. Alonso racing Joey Foster into Paddock Hill Bend isn’t going to happen, Matt.
Then there are alternative and emerging championships. Extreme E would surely love to add Alonso to its big roster of F1 world champions involved to varying degrees. And rallycross is commencing another rebirth, with Travis Pastrana’s US-based Nitro concept looking more exciting than the meandering RX world championship now under WRC Promoter’s control. Neither offers a Le Mans/Daytona/Dakar level jewel, though.
Recent months have underlined just how brilliant a racing driver Alonso remains, and how hungry he still is. Reminding the world that he’s still got ambitions beyond F1 too proves that all those triple crown exploits were a genuine and respectful quest, not just a way to keep his profile high when he’d reversed himself into uncompetitive F1 cars with his career choices.
Whenever he exits the Alpine F1 cockpit, he’s got the freedom to decide whatever criteria he fancies for ‘most complete driver in motorsport ever’ and to get on with enjoying it. If the Le Mans and Daytona 24 Hours and the WEC title are the ‘only’ things he actually wins, that really won’t matter at all.
