To the non-fans of Formula 1, the sport may seem like it’s all about those be-winged but rather fragile machines punting around the circuit for two hours on race weekends. To the true followers of this “religion”, the cars only play a supporting role, the human drama is the reason why we can’t wait for the next race to happen. It’s not unlike Korean drama for motor-sports fan, but with a multi-national cast, and minus the cosmetic surgeries.
I’m a fan of Fernando Alonso. He is in my view the most complete driver since I started renting VHS tapes to watch Alain Prost dice with Nelson Piquet for the championship in the early 80s. He makes slow cars go quicker than they have any right to, he’s mentally indefatigable, never blames the team when the chips are down, never whines about other drivers, yet calls things as they are when he has to. And I can’t remember Alonso ever having a bad day at the office.
I had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Alonso in the 2006 Grand Prix at Sepang after the qualifying session. He was the newly crowned reigning world champion then at the age of 24 with Renault. I couldn’t say I got to know him in the five minutes that was afforded to a few of us from the media, but he dealt with the questions akin to someone with many more titles under his overalls. He went on to win the 2006 drivers championship that year and I thought he would then go on to set more records.
Eight years on, Alonso is still stuck at two, after barren stints at McLaren and Ferrari. With the Italian team, he has the unenviable record of finishing second in the championship behind Sebastian Vettel on three occasions. With seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of hardware performance, Alonso decided to take a gamble and announced at the tail-end of last season that he would leave prancing horse, with a view to rejoin McLaren in 2015.
Having entrenched himself within Ferrari, endeared himself to the team and its loving fans for five years, fighting for every victory and suffering the heartbreaks, saying arrivederci proved much harder than Alonso had imagined. In a two-part documentary expertly put together by Spanish channel La Sexta TV titled Mi ultima carrera con Ferrari (My last race with Ferrari) below, you as a viewer have unparalleled access to Alonso as he faced his final race at Abu Dhabi with Ferrari.
It is refreshing to see an F1 driver open up on the emotions concealed behind the cool shades, Alonso speaks candidly about the team, his friends, other drivers, what goes on in a race weekend, even his father. Clearly it’s heartbreaking to leave the Ferrari family, but it was a decision he felt he had to make for his career. You should have the Kleenex ready next to you, just in case.
(Vettel started life with Ferrari with three podiums in the first three races, even stealing a victory in Malaysia under the noses of Mercedes, and is in a position to sustain a challenge for the entire 2015 season. Alonso has yet to come close to scoring a point in the McLaren Honda. Such is life, and that’s why we love Formula 1)