Fernando Alonso announces his retirement.

[Just_a_fan]

I don't know where you live but unless living in the UK you would never understand the mentality of a British company, especially McLaren being a very traditional British one.

I'm British. I'm well aware that the UK media love to hype British sports stars. I'm also well aware that intelligent people, as found in F1 teams, don't fall for that sort of stuff quite so easily as "John down the pub" does. The hype quickly becomes tedious nonsense and generally only the ardent fan types lap it up. Everyone else tuts quietly to themselves and gets on with their day. Marvellous thing, British reserve.

[Ringleheim]

I'm surprised at all the Alonso hate in this thread!

Say what you want, he has been one of the absolute very best drivers in F1 for a very long time.

He is still as fast as anyone and the sport is poorer for his departure.

It's a real shame he could not have found himself in better drives in the last many years.

If he had only stayed at Ferrari...

[Zynerji]

If he had only stayed at Ferrari...

This is why he is only 2x champion, and several people (myself included) have a negative opinion of him.

For all of his driving talent, and work ethic, he is a spice that ruins any dish that he is added to.

If Fernando had actually put his teams ahead of his own ego (and possibly had better management that didn't constantly inflate it) he would have beaten Schumacher's WDC total by now.

He is, in effect, his own worst enemy.

Sad, because he is probably the supreme talent on the grid.

[TAG]

It's a real shame, if Alonso would have hung around another year he could have gotten two extremely coveted F1 records; most races entered and most races started and forever leave that as his lasting mark on the sport.

[ringo]

Best he leaves now and come back with the new engine regs, or make 1 off appearances like Button did.
I don't see it as a big loss with him off the grid. He has had a poor car for years and that basically made him invisible on track until he gets blue flagged and tries to un-lap himself.
Farewell Alonso, see you when a top drive becomes available!!

Kimi left a top team, took a gap year, then drove for a podium winning car, then for Ferrari. It's not the end of the world for Alonso. Shumacher also left and came back in pretty much an advanced age.

Finally, F1 will not suffer for Alonso leaving. He is a great driver, but life goes on and people will continue to watch the young talented guys compete. Never thought i'd see Lewis and Kimi as the old grandpas in the field, but will Alonso gone, it's looking pretty much like it.

[alexx_88]

I feel like we are spinning in circles. It's obvious teams didn't find hi mas toxic as you do, since both red bull wanted to sign him twice and ferrari was offering him a new deal in 2014. That debunks all the talk about toxicity and other unfounded rumours. From what I've read most top drivers are difficult to manage. I'm sure senna, with all his paranoia, was a pleasure to work with.

He made some seriously bad timed moves, but, in retrospect could you blame him? Nobody in their right mind would've chosen an energy company when they have a Ferrari contract next to it. And nobody would've known that Marchionne will decide to step in, reorganise Ferrari and increase its budget to the level that was needed to compete.

[WaikeCU]

Best he leaves now and come back with the new engine regs, or make 1 off appearances like Button did.
I don't see it as a big loss with him off the grid. He has had a poor car for years and that basically made him invisible on track until he gets blue flagged and tries to un-lap himself.
Farewell Alonso, see you when a top drive becomes available!!

Kimi left a top team, took a gap year, then drove for a podium winning car, then for Ferrari. It's not the end of the world for Alonso. Shumacher also left and came back in pretty much an advanced age.

Finally, F1 will not suffer for Alonso leaving. He is a great driver, but life goes on and people will continue to watch the young talented guys compete. Never thought i'd see Lewis and Kimi as the old grandpas in the field, but will Alonso gone, it's looking pretty much like it.

World class performers perform, but motorsports is coupled with a mechanical aspect. With a name such as Alonso, people tend to look at the driver first and then look at the team. A driver can only do so much, if the car doesn't go any faster, then that's that. I think perhaps in 2010 he could have done better in the final race both him and the team.

But in football, if a top team doesn't win any trophies, the manager will always get the blame and eventually get the sack. Not the team. Here sadly, I feel we are blaming the driver and not the team(s) Alonso drove with.

[Andres125sx]

You evidently didn't get what I was talking about. It's utterly irrelevant who was bad, naughty or cheeky. All that matters is that it ultimately comes down to what the team wants and decides. If the team want to favor Hamilton - that's just the way it is. But blackmailing your own team over sensitive data (aka, the "spygate") was always going to make that relationship unworkable and unsustainable. Ultimately, it led to Alonso having to leave the team and the car that had a championship winning car in both 2007 and 2008.

Probably I didn´t get what you meant, but surely you neither.

A contract is a contract, if they had one for 2008 Alonso could have stayed in Mclaren if he will. He didn´t, and moved to a midfielder. That speaks volumes if some other facts didn´t (We don´t fight kimi, we fight Alonso, McLaren wall jumping with Lewis victories and passive with Alonso´s ones, FIA sending a stewart to ensure equal treatment...)

If the team wants they can do whatever they want, except breaking what the contract stablish, that´s the reason contracts do exist

Then he burnt another bridge leading up to 2014 when he grew frustrated at not winning with Ferrari.To think how many championships Alonso might have won if he had stayed at McLaren for 2008 and stayed at Ferrari beyond 2014. In both cases, he left / was forced to leave a potentially championship winning team for a midfield one.

Repeating BS does not make it true. What bridge did he burn? You didn´t notice he´s a McLaren driver today and Ferrari always said he could contine with them?

And about 2007; I love how everyone is talking about preferential treatment and poor Alonso - yet, no one cares to mention that back then, with the refueling/qualifying fuel load rules, there was a certain strategic element to be played..

So you didn´t realice that´s exactly I was talking about when I did mention they got the best strategy alternatively from first race to Hungary? That´s best evidence we can get about Alonso accepting equal treatment with a rookie driver... up to the point the rookie driver tried to take best strategy two consecutive races disobeying TOs

You obviously didn´t get it, or are intentionally dodging the fact to negate it was Lewis who went against the team, not Alonso. Or maybe the team is bigger than any driver, except if he´s Lewis???

Then the team had to make a decision, and instead of punishing the rebel rookie and british driver (can you imagine media reaction in UK if they went against Lewis?), they did back him up, did allow him to claim against Alonso and McLaren trashing the 1-2 they got on track. From that point Alonso went crazy, blackmail, spygate, etc.

[Andres125sx]

I don't know where you live but unless living in the UK you would never understand the mentality of a British company, especially McLaren being a very traditional British one.

I'm British. I'm well aware that the UK media love to hype British sports stars. I'm also well aware that intelligent people, as found in F1 teams, don't fall for that sort of stuff quite so easily as "John down the pub" does.

Sorry to say this, but that´s a pretty naive point of view.

F1 is about money, for money marketing is crucial, marketing is about people´s point of view about your company, and for that media plays a huge role, they can and actually manipulate people´s point of view at will.

No company want´s media telling bad things about your company, and McLaren is not an exception

Add to that McLaren were also very interested on Lewis beating Alonso (a marketing bomb), and you get 2007 season, aka "we don´t fight Kimi, we fight Alonso".

[Just_a_fan]

I don't know where you live but unless living in the UK you would never understand the mentality of a British company, especially McLaren being a very traditional British one.

I'm British. I'm well aware that the UK media love to hype British sports stars. I'm also well aware that intelligent people, as found in F1 teams, don't fall for that sort of stuff quite so easily as "John down the pub" does.

Sorry to say this, but that´s a pretty naive point of view.

F1 is about money, for money marketing is crucial, marketing is about people´s point of view about your company, and for that media plays a huge role, they can and actually manipulate people´s point of view at will.

No company want´s media telling bad things about your company, and McLaren is not an exception

Add to that McLaren were also very interested on Lewis beating Alonso (a marketing bomb), and you get 2007 season, aka "we don´t fight Kimi, we fight Alonso".

My limited experience of F1 people is that they don't buy in to the bullshit. Your experience obviously differs from mine.

[Andres125sx]

I feel like we are spinning in circles. It's obvious teams didn't find hi mas toxic as you do, since both red bull wanted to sign him twice and ferrari was offering him a new deal in 2014. That debunks all the talk about toxicity and other unfounded rumours. From what I've read most top drivers are difficult to manage. I'm sure senna, with all his paranoia, was a pleasure to work with.

He made some seriously bad timed moves, but, in retrospect could you blame him? Nobody in their right mind would've chosen an energy company when they have a Ferrari contract next to it. And nobody would've known that Marchionne will decide to step in, reorganise Ferrari and increase its budget to the level that was needed to compete.

It drives me nuts when I spent two long posts trying to explain something, and then I notice before my reply there was another post wich do explain perfectly what I was trying to explain, but much better and in a much shorter post

[Andres125sx]

I'm British. I'm well aware that the UK media love to hype British sports stars. I'm also well aware that intelligent people, as found in F1 teams, don't fall for that sort of stuff quite so easily as "John down the pub" does.

Sorry to say this, but that´s a pretty naive point of view.

F1 is about money, for money marketing is crucial, marketing is about people´s point of view about your company, and for that media plays a huge role, they can and actually manipulate people´s point of view at will.

No company want´s media telling bad things about your company, and McLaren is not an exception

Add to that McLaren were also very interested on Lewis beating Alonso (a marketing bomb), and you get 2007 season, aka "we don´t fight Kimi, we fight Alonso".

My limited experience of F1 people is that they don't buy in to the bullshit. Your experience obviously differs from mine.

Not even when that bullshit (one of your drivers winning the title can hardly be called bs) is the same they want theirselves?

[Just_a_fan]

They're all fairly level-headed guys, really. Managers might be different, but the guys doing the work aren't.

[Phil]

It's obvious teams didn't find hi mas toxic as you do, since both red bull wanted to sign him twice and ferrari was offering him a new deal in 2014.

I can't find any evidence to suggest RedBull wanted to sign Alonso twice. Evidently, they had talks in 2008 - which was just reconfirmed again by Helmut Marko. In that same interview (AMuS), he also implies that Alonso has a history of driving for teams that effectively treated him a bit like a one-man-show and that that doesn't really fit with how they run things at RB.

There's also a good piece on Alonso and his frustrations at Ferrari during the 2014 season. Some quotes:

"Frustration at the competitive limitations he was experiencing at one point led Fernando to stipulate that he wanted a veto over technical recruitments, a point confirmed by a source inside Ferrari in 2014. But probably of more significance in this case was the atmosphere the driver’s frustration was lending to the team, regardless of how hard he was working."

"I had the feeling that Fernando had got it into his mind that he could never win with Ferrari,” said Montezemolo, “and that if he was in a Mercedes he could win with one hand and this was very demotivating for everyone. Let me be clear: I believe Alonso is probably the best driver in the world even today – certainly on a Sunday. Maybe not in qualifying, where I think Hamilton and Vettel are maybe faster over one lap, but in the race he is unbelievable – a machine. But we needed motivation and it made me think what we needed for the future."

Indications that things weren't smooth range back to 2013 too, when there was quite a public spat between Montezemolo and their lead driver;

"In over 20 years at the helm, he has never publicly criticised a driver like he has done with Alonso. If this is the public side of the outburst, one can only imagine what was said privately. Ferrari has been around for decades and has had many great champions pass through its doors. Alonso has been given leeway to criticise the team in the past four years, something Michael Schumacher never did, but clearly Montezemolo has decided that enough is enough. No driver is more important than the team.

That was a reference to the latest comments from Fernando Alonso, which did not go down well with Montezemolo, nor with anyone in the team. So, when Montezemolo called the Spaniard this morning to wish him a happy birthday, he also tweaked his ear, reminding him that, “all the great champions who have driven for Ferrari have always been asked to put the interests of the team above their own. This is the moment to stay calm, avoid polemics and show humility and determination in making one’s own contribution, standing alongside the team and its people both at the track and outside it.”

So, things weren't smooth sailing at all and throughout the history of his career, you will find that these stories have followed him through most teams. Frustrations at McLaren in 2007, frustrations at Ferrari from 2013 to 2014 and frustrations at Honda between 2015 and 2017. Clearly, Alonso is not a low maintenance driver, not by any stretch. Christian Horner was very blunt when he stated just recently on why RB would not consider Alonso for a RedBull drive, talking about 'his pattern of causing chaos at many of his previous teams'.

As I said numerous times, and I'm really not bashing him (afterall, I didn't make up these quotes and articles), he may be one of the strongest drivers of this generation, but clearly there are concerns about what he brings to teams that ultimately limited his appeal with the teams who did have a championship winning car.

He made some seriously bad timed moves, but, in retrospect could you blame him? Nobody in their right mind would've chosen an energy company when they have a Ferrari contract next to it. And nobody would've known that Marchionne will decide to step in, reorganise Ferrari and increase its budget to the level that was needed to compete.

You make it sound as if they were all down to Alonso's decision. Evidently, there are heaps of subtle points that this wasn't the case. McLaren in 2007 is self explanatory. After the black mail and going to war with your own team, the relationship was unworkable, hence it was dissolved and discontinued by mutual consent by season end. Ferrari wasn't smooth sailing either - while there was some chance Alonso could stay at the team beyond 2014, Ferrari went ahead and pursued Vettel. And IMO for the best too. At the time and in 2015, I made a post that I felt that Ferrari had done the right thing by investing into Vettel. After all the frustrations the years before with Alonso, the team made big structural changes that gave them new motivation and fresh air. If Alonso had stayed, I'm doubtful Ferrari would be in the strong position they are today. They needed the change just as much Alonso did.

So again, and I feel this must be said - I really admire Alonso for the speed and performance he brings. But I find it hard to feel sorry for him, largely because he ended where he did through his own doing. I feel more 'sorry' for drivers like Hulkenberg who IMO have been overlooked and never even got the chances other drivers did.

[McHonda]

Alonso was just unlucky he wasn't British (and Hamilton is)...

Nope. Alonso was unlucky that his rookie team mate was the real deal who had no fear of sharing the garage with the reigning World Champion. It wouldn't have mattered what Hamilton's nationality was - he was just too damn fast and that put pressure on Alonso. Alonso "lashed out" as that was all he could do - he couldn't "out-quick" Hamilton so he had to try to put pressure on the team. Sadly for Alonso, Ron Dennis doesn't take that from his drivers. In other teams, it may well have worked.

It would've made a significant difference if he wasn't British, it was the reaction from the British press after Monaco that got Ron to take away Alonso's priority status and introduce alternate weekends. The reaction spooked Ron so much that the man with such a reputation for no nonsense as Ron, big scary Ron, didn't punish Lewis not just for the threat over the radio in Monaco about never doing that to him again but also being told to go --- swivel in Hungary didn't get so much as a wrist slap from the same scary Ron. That would've been laughable to suggest in 2006 about a rookie talking like that to Ron Dennis. Lewis had tangible power that year Ron and McLaren just couldn't ignore.

The press soon turned on him as they do but 2007 they played a huge role in stoking the fire and that was largely down to his nationality, so much so that when Alonso was asked about fearing a repeat of 2007 with Stoff last year he said no because he's not British.