Fernando Alonso, life in the red
Fernando Alonso's father once gently told him: ''If you race for Ferrari, people will forget the championships. They will remember you as a Ferrari driver.''
It is doubtful, in his fourth season for the Scuderia and not garlanded with a world championship crown since 2006, whether formula one's great aesthete espouses this sentiment any longer. For this complex figure, the quest for a third world title has become one of restless frustration, softened only by a reacquaintance with his favourite tropical surrounds in Malaysia.
While Sepang, hewn out of the dense jungle that encircles Kuala Lumpur airport, might be a difficult circuit to love, Alonso has found it to be a familiar setting for his most improbable deeds. In this, his 200th race weekend, he can nostalgically recall the occasion in 2003 that he put Renault on pole as a tender 21-year-old. The Spaniard also draws inspiration from the disarray of 12 months ago, when he seized a record-equalling third Malaysian Grand Prix triumph from ninth on the grid, in monsoon conditions. His supremacy in this corner of rainforest is such that he has led for 936 kilometres in 11 races here to date - the equivalent of three grands prix from start to finish.
''Sepang is one of my favourite circuits, because you never forget your first pole or first podium in F1, and both events happened here,'' Alonso explains. ''It is a circuit I love to drive - technical and interesting.''
It is a brutally unforgiving layout, from its blend of long, flowing corners and saturating humidity, so it is apt that it should play so directly to the strengths of a man broadly regarded as the finest all-round driver of his generation. If Alonso possesses a signature gift, it is his remorselessness, and nowhere does his capacity for reeling off lap after lap at the ragged edge of control acquire a higher value than in the 35-degree Malaysian heat. His homeland of Asturias in northern Spain, to which he returned last year after brief tax exile, has held a reputation for fearsome warriors since the time of the Muslim conquests, and in his racing style he fits the archetype exactly. Described by rival Lewis Hamilton as ''the best driver out here'', he wrings every last drop out of his Ferrari's performance.
Part of the explanation lies in his phenomenal fitness levels, which allow him to weather 90 minutes of 320km/h-plus driving in south-east Asian temperatures with few outward signs of discomfort. ''For us in the car it does not feel too much hotter,'' Alonso shrugs, pressed on whether the sapping conditions could prove a decisive factor in Sunday's race. ''You don't feel the heat too much. In fact, it's more of a problem when you stop in the garage because of all the heat soak in the car.''
But Alonso's other crucial attribute is his sheer bloody-mindedness. Last year he began the season in a flawed Ferrari that struggled even to be the fifth-fastest car, and yet after eight races he was leading the title chase. Without a strategic error by his team in the concluding race in Brazil, a third world title would have been his rather than Sebastian Vettel's.
Alonso claims not to be consumed by angst that he has been in contention at the final grand prix in two of the past three seasons, failing to prevail both times, saying merely: ''I have the titles I deserve.''
His father's logic, that it is the experience of representing Ferrari as opposed to the roll of honour, holds some resonance when one considers the innate charisma that renders him the kind of leader and ambassador that the men in Maranello crave. On grid-walks his is the one car almost impossible to approach, given how his Spanish ancestry and rabid Italian support-base create a force field of Latin stage presence.
But Ferrari craves a first driver's title since 2007 every bit as ardently as Alonso does, and the time has seldom been more pressing for him to deliver. A return to the halcyon years of Michael Schumacher, who embodied the pre-eminence of the prancing horse with five straight championships, can scarcely arrive soon enough. ''Schumacher is the driver who pushed me the most,'' he says, reflecting on his brace of titles for Renault in 2005 and 2006. ''He is the one whom I most admired, whom I tried to copy when I watched him live or saw footage of the races. Things are different now: it is more about how each car performs on every turn and not so much about who is behind the wheel.''
You can detect a faint note of resentment in his words. Alonso is as convinced as his admirers that if this were a straight contest to discover the most accomplished driver, he would win by a distance. Unfortunately for him, the campaign of 2013 promises to hinge not so much on his daredevil overtaking, or his tenacious taming of an imperfect car, as the intricacies of race strategy.
While Kimi Raikkonen's raw pace was evident in Australia last weekend, Alonso intuits that the Finn's win sprang from the fact that Lotus assumed a two-stop strategy versus Ferrari's three. Malaysia is the place, if history is a gauge, for him to make his naked skill the difference.
Telegraph, London
