Fernando Alonso's 2015 Canadian GP Radio Outburst Highlights His Biggest Flaw
Fernando Alonso's eyes will have lit up when he learned of Felipe Massa and Sebastian Vettel's demise in qualifying at last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix.
Handicapped by the limitations of McLaren's MP4-30, the two-time world champion had spent much of his first five races of 2015 racing alone, he and team-mate Jenson Button cut adrift from the pack as their employers troubleshoot the many problems with their new Honda power unit.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Those issues, unflattering at most venues this season, were magnified at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, where the long straights meant Honda's lack of efficiency and power deficit to their rival manufacturers—BBC Sport's Andrew Benson claims the engine is 20 kilometres per hour slower than that of Mercedes—were exposed.
Entering the race with little chance of scoring his first points of the campaign, Alonso would have taken comfort from being joined at the rear of the grid by two drivers with whom his career has been closely linked.
Massa, whom he partnered at Ferrari between 2010 and 2013, and Vettel, whom he battled for several world championships in that period and who ultimately replaced him at the Prancing Horse for 2015, had both been eliminated from Q1 on Saturday after being hampered by engine-related niggles.
But with two of the quickest cars in the field at their disposal, the pair were expected to charge through the field and still record strong points finishes.
For Alonso, they were a sad reminder of what he once was, what he could have been and what he should have been in 2015.
With few aspirations of his own in Canada, his plan of action ahead of the race, almost certainly, was to harm the progress of Massa and Vettel, to keep them in sight for as long as possible and, essentially, to prove a point, to remind the wider world that he—despite no longer having the results to show for it—remains the benchmark performer in Formula One.
As early as Lap 4, Alonso defended the inside line from Massa at Turn 1 with all his might before forcing Vettel to attempt an ambitious overtake at the hairpin, leading to the four-time world champion wasting time by locking his brakes and running wide at the hairpin.
As Vettel once again made his way through the pack following his early first pit stop, the German ran over the grass on the exit of Turn 7 while tracking Alonso on Lap 20 and, just seconds later, was forced to miss the final chicane as the McLaren stubbornly refused to relinquish 15th position.
Vettel finally completed the pass the following lap, having opted to follow Alonso through the final chicane and, with the aid of DRS, sail by on the main straight; he would later admit to Autosport's Lawrence Barretto and Matt Beer that he "should've been a bit smarter" in combat with the Spaniard.
In other words, Sebastian should have known Alonso was going to target him in wheel-to-wheel battle and should have possessed the self-control to prevent himself from being lured into the McLaren driver's traps. Fernando, unsurprisingly, told the same source how the battle with Vettel was "the best part" of his race.
But it was hardly the most significant.
No, that came four laps after his ego trip with Vettel came to an end, when his race engineer urged Alonso to conserve his fuel, to which he, according to the FIA television feed, replied: "I don't want...I don't want. Already I have big problems now. Driving with this, looking like (an) amateur. So I race and then I concentrate on the fuel."
Having relished his blast from the past in racing Massa and Vettel in what was arguably his most enjoyable grand prix of the year until that point, McLaren's fuel-saving request was an unwelcome reminder of his responsibilities and his constraints.
It was no surprise, then, that Alonso responded emotionally, yet the terminology used by Alonso in rejecting the pit wall's request—implying it is he, not the team, being humiliated by McLaren's shortcomings—revealed much about his attitude at this stage of his career.
While the most successful drivers in the sport's history have embraced a team environment—the most obvious example being Michael Schumacher's reconstruction of Ferrari in the late 1990s and early 2000s—Alonso views a team as nothing more than an extension of his own brilliance.
His self-serving post-race comments to Sky Sports' Pete Gill that he prioritised having "some fun" to enhance his "motivation" almost made it ludicrous to think McLaren signed him as the face, the leader of their Honda project when Alonso, for all the talk of togetherness, is on a personal voyage.
Alonso has been the subject of much sympathy this season, having fled Ferrari just as the team returned to competitiveness, and it was fitting that on a day the first fumes of frustration with his McLaren predicament were released into the public consciousness, the Prancing Horse produced one of their most impressive performances of the season with their new hero.
As we noted after the race, starting at the back of the grid presented an alternative test of the working relationship between Ferrari and Vettel at what, despite winning in Malaysia in just their second race together, remains an early stage of their partnership.
And despite enduring a challenging afternoon—the German lost time with a delayed pit stop and scuffles with Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg—Vettel, on an aggressive two-stop strategy, still managed to finish a comfortable fifth.
In the days following the Canadian GP, Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene—who was confirmed in his role less than 24 hours after Alonso ran his last race for the Prancing Horse—reflected on the Italian outfit's progress under his stewardship in an interview with the official F1 website.
Recalling his start to life at Ferrari, Arrivabene explained how he found a "divided" team devoid of any "spirit."
He explained how his employees were "very defensive," petrified and paralysed by the years of failure and the knowledge that a single mistake or error of judgement would—like Chris Dyer, like Luca Marmorini, like Stefano Domenicali and many, many others—cost them their job.
And he explained how his first assignment was simply "to put them together again."
Six months into his first year in charge and Arrivabene's first mission has been well and truly accomplished in a process accelerated by the absence of Alonso, who has always underestimated the value of team spirit.
It is why the Prancing Horse were happy to see him become someone else's problem for 2015 and why Ferrari, for all Alonso's talent behind the wheel, are better off without him.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
