ALONSO A MCLAREN LEGEND ?

2 December, 2018 

By: Paul Velasco

As many readers of this site may know, I always had a soft spot McLaren, you could put me among their fans who are disgruntled by the manner in which this once mighty team has fallen, reducing it to the back of the grid embarrassment, something unthinkable in the team’s glorious heyday.

For me growing up with the sport it was easy to admire the Ron Dennis led McLaren team, here was the mechanic who made his mark in Formula 2 with his Project 4 operation.

The story after that is well told: he progressed to Formula 1 taking over the underperforming Teddy Mayer led, Marlboro backed operation in the late seventies.

Under Dennis, the team rose from what were near ashes to become the incredible force it was in the eighties and nineties – a truly remarkable story, with so many distinguished drivers winning races and titles for the team. Not to mention the spawning and establishing of a sportscar manufacturer with huge potential.

So the point of this tale: this morning when reading an interview with Carlos Sainz I was piqued by the following question put to the Spaniard by the McLaren media office or whoever conducted the Q&A:

You’re following in the footsteps of Hunt, Senna, Prost, Häkkinen, Alonso… what does this mean to you?

Reading the names of a few of the McLaren greats and finding Alonso in there, triggered my annoyance.

Call me pedantic, but when you are writing history, from a team’s perspective (in this case McLaren) it is wise to be very careful, because what is presented as ‘fact’ lives on the internet indefinitely thus incorrect associations such as this can distort how history is perceived not only now but also in the future.

Before wielding the hammer at the Alonso-McLaren myth, with regards to Fernando I am in the camp that regards him as one of the greats of his era, a true fighter, gutsy and with a fire in the belly that I admire in drivers. We have celebrated his accomplishments in many, many posts on this site.

His boss Zak Brown summed up the Spaniard as a “racing monster” and I buy into that theory. Enormous plaudits for the young guy for what he did at Renault in 2005 and 2006, inspiring Spain with his success. His Ferrari adventure was amazing but cruelly no titles for his efforts in red.

In other words big respect and admiration for him, but as a McLaren fan… Alonso is NOT one of the great McLaren drivers and should be not be mentioned as one, in fact, stats show (and this is what they will be looking at in 50 years or more from now) compared to what he achieved with Renault and Ferrari, he seriously underachieved at Woking.

In 94 starts with the team, he scored 241 points at an average of 2.56 points per race, winning only four times. His average at Ferrari was 12.4 points per race, and with Renault 4.46 per geepee.

In terms of average points scored by McLaren drivers, he is 17th on the list, tied with Pedro de la Rosa!

Of the 20 drivers that have won grands prix for the team, he is 13th on the list with his four triumphs in the team’s colours.

Furthermore, the most damning aspect of his time at Woking is what he cost the team, using simple maths with official figures freely available on the web, the ballpark figure is outright staggering.

Let’s start with the $100-million fine that McLaren received after that tumultuous 2007 season when he partnered rookie Lewis Hamilton. For those who forgot about ‘Spygate’ or ‘Stepneygate’.

As Reuters reported at the time: “Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso expects McLaren to continue backing his title push despite his role in providing key evidence against the team in a spying controversy.”

It was a bitter period for all concerned, Fernando left at the end of that season back to the sanctuary of Renault run by mentor Flavio Briatore at the time.

Fast forward a decade, Fernando returns to McLaren (unbelievably) coaxed back to the team by Dennis himself, on a mega-bucks deal said to be worth $40-million per year, which will have netted him a cool $160-million to date.

But the greatest cost to the team was the loss of Honda, orchestrated by Alonso whose moaning about the Japanese manufacturer captured headlines until inevitably ‘poof’ went the deal at a cost of a reported $75-million per year to the McLaren coffers.

When a Sheikh states publically that the Honda deal “was expensive” believe me, it was damn expensive!

After trashing Honda, Alonso convinced Zak, and his noobs, that Renault power was the solution to get them winning again at $15-million per season for the ‘privilege’ of being a customer team.

So doing some simple maths on a napkin, I calculate that the bill McLaren has footed and will foot until 2020 for Alonso’s shenanigans amounts to over a staggering billion dollars plus.

More simple maths: every point he scored for the team cost them over $2-million…

For the sake of comparison, consider that in five years with Mercedes, Hamilton bagged 2105 points at an average of 17.69 in 119 starts with the team, which works out at a cost of $71,000 per point scored by the Briton.

To end the rant of a disgruntled fan watching McLaren history being tampered with by a media release that distorts reality in a subtle way and at the same time does a severe injustice to the team’s true great drivers.

So when Media Guy (or whoever) was asking the question to young Carlos, it should have gone like this:

You’re following in the footsteps of Fittipaldi, Hunt, Lauda, Senna, Prost, Berger, Häkkinen, Button, Hamilton, Coulthard, Raikkonen, … what does this mean to you?

There is absolutely no place among those McLaren greats for Alonso, the legend that he is, and I also believe there was no reason he should be feted and celebrated as the team did ad nauseam since his departure was announced months ago.

My McLaren would have allowed him to walk away into the distance with no special livery or big fuss, just as they did with their real greats in the past.

If anything Fernando deserved that type of hyped-up farewell and thank you tribute from Renault, after all he is their first and only F1 world champion as a works team, his great legacy lies there.