Should Fernando Alonso Still Be Considered the Best F1 Driver of the Era?
At the very moment that Michael Schumacher climbed out of a Ferrari for the final time in parc ferme at the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix and headed for his first retirement, Fernando Alonso inherited the unofficial tag as the most complete driver in Formula One.
And with good reason.
The Spaniard, after breaking Schumacher's five-year spell of dominance to become the youngest-ever world champion in F1 history the previous year, had just added his second crown in as many years.
Over the course of his two title-winning seasons, Alonso had claimed 12 pole positions, 14 wins and 29 podium finishes in 37 grands prix, glowing reflections of his qualifying speed, his race pace and, most impressively, his consistency.
Sure, there were some concerns over his maturity and ability to manage pressure—telling The Guardian's Alan Henry that Renault had left him feeling "alone" with just two races of the '06 campaign remaining and the championship in the balance was on a par with a driver running over his pit crew—but Alonso's brilliance on the track far outweighed his occasional prickliness away from it.
And at just 25, those rough edges would be ironed out over the years.
Now at the age of 33, there is little doubt that time has had a humbling effect on Alonso, whose most recent outburst of real note came at last year's Hungarian Grand Prix, where he was quoted by BBC Sport's Andrew Benson as stating that he wanted "someone else's car" for his 32nd birthday.
The Spaniard, in the eyes of many, remains the most complete driver on the grid, but the results no longer support that theory as strongly as they once did.
He has won 17 races since the end of 2006, but Alonso has failed to get that third world championship over the line, missing out on the crown in the final races of the 2007, 2010 and 2012 campaigns.
Alonso's time away from the top has coincided with the emergence of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel—the two drivers to whom he is most often compared—who despite making their grand prix debuts in 2007 have a combined total of five world championships between them, with the former standing a good chance of making it six in the coming months.
"Berger: Until a year ago I saw Alonso as the most complete #F1 driver. But after 2013, for the first time, I put Vettel in first place.
— Fans of Seb Vettel (@FansOfSebVettel) January 10, 2014"
From a performance perspective, there is one key aspect of Alonso's weaponry that is missing in contrast to his peers: one-lap pace.
While Vettel and Hamilton have seemingly always be relied upon to pull a sensational flying lap out of the hat in the dying seconds of a qualifying session, Alonso—admittedly, not helped by a floundering Ferrari in recent years—has been found to be lagging behind.
The 2012 German Grand Prix was the scene of his last pole position—which was also his most recent front-row start—while his last pole in dry conditions occurred, unbelievably, just shy of four years ago at the 2010 Singapore Grand Prix.
Alonso's failure to extract the most from his machinery and his consequent underachievement on Saturdays often leaves him with more to gain by playing catch-up on Sundays, which contributes to his self-appointed identity as a "warrior" in racing conditions.
The reason behind the Spaniard's relatively average success in qualifying conditions, as well as substandard machinery, is arguably the passing of time.
You only have to look across the Ferrari garage to see Kimi Raikkonen, a fellow world champion who, with his 35th birthday less than a month away, has gradually lost the vigorous pace that allowed the Finnish driver to challenge Alonso for the title in 2005.
Even Hamilton, widely regarded as the fastest man in F1 across one lap, is arguably not as thrillingly quick as he was when he burst onto the scene in 2007, his rookie campaign, and 2008, when he claimed his first world championship.
Another flaw in Alonso's repertoire is his very occasional tendency to make small—yet costly—mistakes behind the wheel.
And although the Spaniard is far more reliable than the vast majority of his fellow competitors on the grid, slight losses of concentration and errors of judgement—which have occurred on a one-per-season basis in recent years—have prevented Alonso from putting his status as the best driver on the grid beyond any doubt.
His failure to leave Raikkonen, then at Lotus, any room at the start of the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix, which led to a race-ending puncture, arguably cost Alonso that year's title while his retirement from last year's Malaysian Grand Prix after clumsily tagging the rear of Vettel's car and choosing to continue with a damaged front wing left him with a mountain to climb from a very early stage in the season.
Alonso repeated the trick in last month's Belgian Grand Prix, hitting the Red Bull driver at the La Source hairpin and losing an element of his front wing although the fact that it took place on the final lap of the race when he was running in a distant seventh place meant it slipped under the radar.
In spite of those minor imperfections in his driving, however, Alonso remains—for now, at least—the most accomplished driver in the current era of Formula One.
Despite his drought of success, the Spaniard has this season provided several reminders of his qualities, with that 14-lap battle with Vettel at Silverstone a reflection of his aggression, fearlessness and fairness in wheel-to-wheel combat.
His drive to second in Hungary, where he was on course for victory until the final three laps, meanwhile showed that he has retained that wonderful knack of being there or thereabouts when a surprise result is up for grabs.
Alonso remains a class act, but as long as that third world title continues to elude him—and as long as the likes Hamilton, Vettel and, indeed, Daniel Ricciardo, the star of 2014, all continue to grow and mature as racing drivers—the Spaniard's rivals will soon be queuing up to dethrone him as the most complete competitor in the sport.
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