Alonso’s ‘El Plan’ turned from a motivation to a bitter mockery of the French team’s project, which is leaking everywhere
The week of the Japanese GP usually leaves different images of the drivers. You just have to check their social networks: their pre-meeting activities in Suzuka are not the same as those of Paul Ricard or Montmeló. From Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly giving their all in a karaoke (luckily they are pilots and not singers), to Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc imitating the fashionable video in the Japanese country. Every year no pilot forgets his visit to the Land of the Rising Sun.
One of the events that received the least publicity was led by Fernando Alonso. The Asturian pilot gave a lecture after which they asked him to drive a few laps in a simulator that they had installed there ‘in situ’. The virtual car the Spaniard drove was this season’s Aston Martin, as a prologue to the one he will drive in 2023. There is no more powerful metaphor for the situation.
Alonso doesn’t think about Alpine any more than when he’s in the car. His energy and focus is already on Aston Martin and the promises of revolution that have been made to him. While the bets are very little optimistic with the car the Spaniard can take in this new journey, what will he not have seen in his current squad to flee Alpine.
The Spaniard’s words in Singapore still resonate. The fury with which he left Marina Bay was evident in his lost gaze to the horizon. Only those 60 points that he estimated to have lost resonated in his head. They can’t afford more, not so much because of their battle with McLaren for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship, which Alonso cares about to some extent, but because they ridicule him in one of his most productive and confident campaigns. .
Alonso finds himself in a maelstrom of sensations. Alpine’s CEO stated in an interview in ‘Marca’ published this Friday, the same day the Spaniard set another best time in free practice, that he thought he was the best at the moment. Laurent Rossi tacitly admitted that they unleashed a runner who could lead them to victory, and that his management (at the hands of his field chancellor, the late Otmar Szafnauer) has been disastrous to say the least.
While his increasingly ex-team is looking for a replacement for him, a hot potato that looks doomed to sign Pierre Gasly – Esteban Ocon’s declared enemy since forever, they should be preparing in Alpine… – Alonso focuses itself on its own. And he has no doubts: his goal is to make a splash in the remaining races. Those who follow closely see in him an unusual appetite for revenge, a desire to show that his team still betrayed him and forced him to go to Aston Martin. And there would be no better vendetta than an eloquent, “I told you so.”
While his boss still considers him the best in the world, his team disappoints him. Two retirements followed by technical difficulties are understandable. Failure to replace the engine earlier, when they were foreseeable, is explained as worse. Alpine describes it as a bold and courageous plan, but cemeteries are full of it, and Alonso doesn’t want to get to that point.
Home to the samurai culture that Oviedo admires so much, Japan presents itself as a golden opportunity. The rain that hit this Friday made Alonso more let loose, with more desire to show that, mad or sensible, he is willing that all the troubles of those who trusted the idea of ’The Plan’ were worth it. Last year, hours in front of the Qatar stage, many looked suspicious… while others took to the phrase that made humorist José Mota so fashionable in his skits: “Yes, I know no, but… what if yes?” Perhaps a great result, especially if it is a win, will serve to straighten out Alonso’s story on his return to Formula 1 and that those crooked lines will once again be worthy of the best of epics.
Source: La Verdad
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