How Fernando Alonso views his luck as unwanted F1 stat ‘doesn’t sound right’
Fernando Alonso has assessed his good vs. bad luck ratio as being 50/50 across his career.
Fernando Alonso believes his luck has averaged out against misfortune across his long career in F1, but says his lack of a recent Grand Prix win does stand out.
The Spaniard has bemoaned his bad luck over team radio on a few occasions, but, in the cooler light of day, believes his ratio of good vs. bad luck is evenly spread.
Fernando Alonso: My luck is 50/50
Alonso retired from the Italian Grand Prix two weeks ago when his right-front suspension collapsed while driving over a kerb exiting the Ascari Chicane.
His suspension had been weakened due to an errant stone hitting it early in the race, before it collapsed under load, costing Alonso a potential points finish as he had been circulating in eighth place.
“I knew that it was not due to the kerb, so it was just a suspension failure,” he said on Thursday ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“If the cause of it was not a production thing or quality control thing, it’s obviously better. That is just bad luck as a stone hit a physical part of the car that was not strong enough.
“But yep, nothing we can do now.
“Unfortunately, another bad luck and points that we lost in a race.”
The Aston Martin team hasn’t reinforced the suspension arms as a result of the failure, Alonso explained, saying, “I mean, it’s always gonna be exposed to some external objects that may come to the car, but I think it is one in a 10 million cases.
“So, let’s hope that in 10 million races, I have another failure like that!”
Earlier this year, Alonso branded himself the “unluckiest driver in the world” when an unfortunately timed Virtual Safety Car wrecked his Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, dropping him out of the points from fifth place.
When calmer, he rowed it back to simply say he had thought the events of the race had been “unfair” to him, but in a career that has been epitomised by poorly-timed team switches or championship events keeping more titles out of reach, how does the two-time F1 World Champion really look upon his levels of luck in F1?
“Good luck, bad luck, I think 50/50, to be honest,” he said.
“When you do 400-plus races, there are a lot of races with good luck, a lot of races with bad luck, but I think everything is compensated.
“Even when I went to Le Mans for the second time, we were two minutes behind the leader one hour before the end, and then they had a puncture, and had a wheel that was not properly done, and they had a double pitstop on the following lap.
“Then I won that Le Mans! So that was a lot of luck on our side.
“So, you know, everything is compensated. But yeah, probably over 20 years, I think… it’s more than 10 years since I won my last F1 Grand Prix, that doesn’t sound right to me.”
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Alonso’s switch to his current team, Aston Martin, may prove a ‘lucky’ one in the end as, next year, he will drive an Adrian Newey-penned car for the first time in his career, uniting him with the car designer behind the machines that beat him across several title campaigns over a decade ago.
This move was triggered during a particularly galling season in 2022 when driving for Alpine, as Alonso encountered multiple technical failures that sapped his points tally, before he bounced back strongly with multiple podiums in 2023 at his new team.
“For sure, I remember 2022, when I think my Alpine car was not too bad, we were competitive, I had 12 DNFs – always in the races that I was P5 or P6,” he said.
“I think that year, the team counted like 55 to 60 points lost. This year, we are already up to 22, I think.
“It’s a shame that we cannot finish the races on merit when we are in the points, and then, when we are slow because we are uncompetitive normally things are always smooth and nice until the chequered flag, and we score no points.”
Should next year’s car prove competitive, Alonso reckons he will be back in “normal luck”.
“This is the way it is, and this is the sport, the nature of the sport,” he said.
“As long as, if next year we have a good car, we are in normal luck. We don’t ask for good luck, but normal luck is okay.”
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