Why Alonso has made good career moves given the timing.

There’s no doubt that most people consider Fernando Alonso the best current driver on the F1 grid. If not the best, he certainly is among the top three. But lately, some people seem to have concluded that his career has been ridden with a series of poorly-timed moves, which contributed to his lack of driver’s titles after 2006. While it’s plain fact that he has not won in the last eight years (arguably during his prime and most mature phase), he placed himself in the best possible position every time.

To summarize his career so far:

Year	Team	Standing	World Champion
2001	Minardi	23rd	Michael Schumacher
2002	Renault	Test Driver	Michael Schumacher
2003	Renault	6th	Michael Schumacher
2004	Renault	4th	Michael Schumacher
2005	Renault	1st	Fernando Alonso
2006	Renault	1st	Fernando Alonso
2007	McLaren	3rd	Kimi Raikkonen
2008	Renault	5th	Lewis Hamilton
2009	Renault	9th	Jenson Button
2010	Ferrari	2nd	Sebastian Vettel
2011	Ferrari	4th	Sebastian Vettel
2012	Ferrari	2nd	Sebastian Vettel
2013	Ferrari	2nd	Sebastian Vettel
2014	Ferrari	6th	Lewis Hamilton

His first move to Renault clearly was the right choice as it led up to his two world championships. Once he was promoted to race driver in 2003, he and the team showed immediate promise. Alonso snatched the pole in only his second race in Malaysia. He secured his second pole in Hungary and converted it to a win. The season overall was very competitive. Although Schumacher was defending his three straight driver’s titles, he was strongly challenged by Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya. Alonso’s 6th place finish was only behind Ferrari, McLaren, and Williams drivers.

Although Ferrari and Schumacher completely dominated 2004, Renault showed improvements to become 3rd in the constructor’s championship. Alonso finished 4th after the Ferrari drivers and Button. In 2005, McLaren probably had the fastest car, but Raikkonen had reliability issues and other problems. Alonso was always right there to take points when McLaren could not convert their advantage to wins. Renault’s consistency won Alonso the title with ultimately more wins and podiums. This performance continued and even improved in 2006 to secure Alonso’s second title. In fact, the Renault was arguably the strongest race craft that year, just beating out Schumacher in Ferrari. Both drivers had two retirements, and in the races Alonso finished, the only times he did not finish 1st or 2nd were two 5th places.

Alonso moves to McLaren for the 2007 season. Both McLaren and Ferrari are miles ahead of the rest of the field that season scoring over 200 points each. Renault managed to only score 51 points and placing 4th overall. McLaren had the best season: without points penalties, they would have scored 218 to Ferrari’s 204. What Alonso, McLaren, and the rest of the Formula 1 world didn’t expect was Lewis Hamilton’s titanic rookie performance. It’s not often that a rookie starts in a top team and challenges a teammate fresh off of back-to-back titles, let alone actually beating him. Hamilton’s impressive piloting ability meant both drivers were taking points off of each other, while Raikkonen had a small but clear advantage over teammate Massa. Twice Alonso finished just behind Hamilton, both worth 2 points each[1]. Even swapping places in one of those races would have been enough to secure Alonso his third straight WDC. Additionally, Alonso’s mischievous decision to delay his final run in qualifying at Hungary probably cost him the win or 2nd place. Again, enough to secure him the title.

This essay is not meant to show the ifs and buts of Alonso’s career, but rather simply state that he was in the right place whenever he could be and anyone else would have done the same. The main hindrance at this point was his relationship with Ron Dennis and McLaren falling apart in 2007. Whatever the reason may be, putting all reports and speculations aside, he left McLaren with no good place to go. He settled back with Renault which gave him a “meh” car at best. We could say he lost one opportunity in 2008 by moving to Renault, not because he necessarily wanted to be there, but possibly waiting for a better seat to open up like one at Ferrari.

In 2009, there were major technical rule changes which shuffled the grid order while teams struggled to make the most of the new regulations. Ferrari and McLaren were both way off the pace. The only team that got it right over the winter was Brawn. Red Bull was not too far behind initially, but quickly caught up and outpaced them. McLaren developed the car well and were very strong by the end of the season, but it was too late to make up the points by then. No one thought Brawn would be the team to beat, and no one thought Red Bull would be their challenger.

Alonso takes the opportunity to jump to Ferrari for 2010. Despite technical changes shaking up the grid, if any team would be able to develop and master the changes over time it would be either Ferrari or McLaren. The latter already demonstrated this in the first year. Alas, Red Bull dominated the next four years with an impressive, Adrian Newey-led aero package. Although, Red Bull had the overall speed in these years, intermittent reliability issues and general mistakes gave opportunities to Ferrari and McLaren to keep up in points.

Where else could Alonso have gone between 2010 and 2014? A double world champion wanted a winning team, or at least a team who can develop to become one, like his time with Renault. Even if it had been clear Red Bull would be the place to be the next four years, there was no seat for him. Red Bull brought in talent from their driver development program.

With that being said, year after year we see that a fast but unreliable car is not always enough to take the glory. 2010 famously had a 5-way race to the driver’s title until very late in the season. Sebastian Vettel did not even lead the points once until he actually won the last race.

Reliability, mistakes, penalties, and other random chaos again kept Vettel from running away with the title in 2012. Even though the general consensus is that Red Bull had the faster car, Alonso put up a strong fight throughout the season and lost points with his own issues throughout the season. He had thirteen podiums including three wins, and he lost 43 points to Vettel in Belgium and Japan when he was taken out by other drivers. All other finishes were in the points. He benefited quite a bit from other driver’s misfortunes, nevertheless, it was a strong season performance.

To summarize, Alonso has now made four career moves that we can look back on to see results.

First to Renault: positive, 2 titles.

Second to McLaren: positive, fastest car, missed title by 1 point arguably because of unexpected strong performance by rookie Hamilton

Third to Renault: negative move, but no where else to go at the time. Potentially missed out on 2008 title, but not a 2009 title.

Fourth to Ferrari: positive, though not the fastest car, through consistency challenged for 2 titles down to last race. Red Bull was not an available seat anyway.

Hamilton had a six-year run with McLaren before jumping ship, while Fernando had just done three with two near misses. From his perspective he had to keep some faith and loyalty with the most successful team in Formula 1. If Ferrari could get a bit more performance out of the car, they could potentially have had the strongest car in the field. Hamilton in 2012 was already at the point Alonso would eventually reach in 2014: tired of being strong, but not strong enough, tired of big promises, but no delivery.

Mercedes planned far ahead and it was too early for Alonso to give up on Ferrari. It also seems like Niki Lauda and Mercedes had a keen eye for Hamilton over Alonso at that time. This vision is probably what McLaren had when building up the new team for a Honda era. They wanted to poach a top driver to lead a revitalized team to glory over the next few years.

Even though Alonso has constantly been hounded by questions of regret from the media, it’s far too early to say anything. Alonso’s ability to take a leap of faith into McLaren shows maturity. All drivers make decisions based on what might be best for their career given the circumstances. Let’s step back and see how this new partnership pans out for Alonso.