It has taken the best part of a season but Fernando Alonso may yet throw off the fug that has engulfed him come Formula One’s final round in Abu Dhabi. Certainly closing the curtain on McLaren’s disastrous relationship with Honda will give the Spaniard reason for a sigh of relief but there is a strong likelihood that events even sooner may prove enough for Alonso to revel in racing again.
He is expected to undertake a test in Bahrain on Sunday of Toyota’s TS050 Hybrid after the conclusion of the World Endurance Championship, as a precursor to the team taking him on for the 2018 Le Mans 24 Hours. Toyota will not comment on any deal but he is understood to have already agreed a seat with them at next year’s race.
He has made his desire to achieve motor racing’s triple crown clear. Requiring wins at Monaco, the Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans, it is a feat only managed by Graham Hill. Alonso has won Monaco twice, raced at Indy this year and has been open in his ambition to compete in the world’s greatest sportscar race.
It is a mouthwatering prospect and as his decision to go to the Brickyard was enthusiastically embraced, so is the prospect of Alonso on track at the Circuit de la Sarthe negotiating the magnificent challenge of the Porsche Curves, Tertre Rouge and Indianapolis.
The problem of being associated with Toyota rivals Honda has gone and McLaren, with whom he has signed a new contract, are amenable. The team won Le Mans in 1995 with the F1 GTR and the executive director, Zak Brown, who has ambitions to return the team to the race as a manufacturer, is all in favour.
“We’d love for him to win the triple crown in a McLaren,” he said. “But in the meantime if he wants to get some experience at Daytona, Le Mans, we’re very open-minded.”
Brown’s reference to Daytona is an indication of just how seriously the Spaniard is taking the triple crown. Alonso will compete in a prototype in next year’s Daytona 24 Hours in January and it is no idle bid to take home a winner’s Rolex.
Daytona, as with Le Mans, will feature multiple classes of cars with significant speed differentials and driver abilities. Dealing with this traffic without incident and maintaining top lap times is one of the most crucial skills he must learn. Without doubt Alonso has designated Daytona as a stepping stone to Le Mans.
His timing, too, could not be better. Le Mans is the blue riband event of the WEC, a series that has recently undergone considerable convulsions.
With both Audi and Porsche withdrawing from the top LMP1 class in the past 12 months it leaves Toyota as the only manufacturer at the top level for 2018. The series is undergoing a revamp and while doing so is to host a “superseason” beginning at Spa in May next year and going on to include Le Mans in June and concluding with a second round of the 24 in 2019.
Toyota have still yet to confirm their participation but are expected to do so shortly and will have the front of the field to themselves. Which is not to suggest that the task will be easy. A potential three-car team will offer internal competition enough and the marque, which has never won the race, has no little experience in how hard it is. In 2016, leading the race, their car ground to a halt on the penultimate lap after 23 hours and 57 minutes of racing. Last year, although the class of the field, mechanical problems and an accident meant Porsche were victorious once again.
Alonso, then, knows the magnitude of the task he has set himself. But Allan McNish, a three-times winner of the race and WEC champion with Audi in 2013, believes it is one he will embrace.
“Fernando would enjoy it,” says McNish, who was test driver with the Renault Formula One team during the Spaniard’s first season with them in 2003. “The car, the style of racing and the intensity of the event. He has been vocal about racing at Le Mans, I have spoken to him on many occasions about it. I would be on the edge of my seat watching it as you know what a fighter he is.”
McNish is also confident that racing differing classes will come naturally to Alonso. “Fernando is experienced enough to get a hold of driving a new car,” he says. “He will have to adapt to overtaking traffic but it is one of his skills, he can overtake, he is feisty about it.”
Perhaps his biggest task, however, will be moving from the single-seater mentality of battling team-mates to sharing a car with two other drivers.
“Racing drivers are not good at sharing toys,” McNish says. “You are always working to beat your team-mate and to make sure the car is set up for you and no one else. Then suddenly you have two other people involved and you have to consider them. There is no point having a car that is quick for you that they can’t drive.”
If his willingness to learn and take advice as exhibited at Indy is repeated, Alonso can be expected to adapt quickly. For some of us the annual pilgrimage to La Sarthe is always highly anticipated but the presence of one of the best drivers of his generation taking on the 24 will make 2018 something very special. If Alonso soon has reason to smile, so do fans of motor racing around the world.