Fernando Alonso makes it his goal to do post-race donuts with Sebastian Vettel

Fernando Alonso has made it a goal to do donuts with Sebastian Vettel at the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to mark the end of the German’s career.

Plenty will remember the closing scenes of the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when Lewis Hamilton and Vettel celebrated the end of Alonso’s Formula 1 career by doing donuts with him on the Yas Marina circuit.

Following some turgid years at McLaren, Alonso gave up on the sport and after the race, Vettel congratulated him on his career which saw him win two World Championships.

But of course, Alonso was lured back in and while Hamilton has predicted the same will happen with Vettel, for now this weekend does represent the final race of the four-time World Champion’s career.

To mark the occasion, Alonso has stated one of his goals this weekend is to be on the track at the end of the race so that he can say “bye-bye” to Vettel.

“We need a good Saturday because if you start in the top 10, it seems like it’s easier to follow the train of cars in front,” Alonso told Formula1.com.

“On Sunday, the goal is to secure P4 in the Constructors’ and hopefully saying bye-bye to Seb on the in lap.”

Alonso was then asked if that would include some donuts and he replied “hopefully.”

But there is plenty of work left to do for Alonso with Alpine in a battle for P4 with McLaren. Currently it is the French team who occupy the spot but do so by only 19 points.

The Spaniard went on to suggest that Alpine needed to get “creative” with their set-up in order to maximise the potential of the car.

“The car felt good, as it has done lately, but there are still a couple of things I want to change to feel a little bit better at the front end

“I think we suffered a little bit of understeering today so I think we did a few changes on the session but it didn’t completely solve the problem so we have top be a little bit more creative tonight on the set-up.”

Alonso sat out FP1 as rookie Jack Doohan took his place and the Spaniard was full of praise for the young Australian.

“Jack was doing a very good job in FP1,” Alonso said. “It’s never easy to jump from F1 in FP1 and then to F2 qualifying so he had a very busy morning.

“I tried to help as much as I could. We’ve been preparing FP1 since yesterday and this morning and he’s a very nice guy. I like him and I think he did very well.”

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