Encyclopedia

DRIVERS: FERNANDO ALONSO

Name: Fernando Alonso
Nationality: Spain
Date of birth: July 29, 1981 - Oviedo

Fernando Alonso, Spanish GP 2005 

 ¬¨¬© The Cahier Archive

Alonso's father built him a kart when he was only two years old but it was not until he was 13 that he was able to do any serious racing. He won the Spanish cadet national kart title in 1994. Two years later he won the World Junior Karting title and he continued in karts until 1999 when he moved into car racing in the Nissan Open series in Spain, driving for former F1 driver Adrian Campos's team. He won the title at his first attempt and then moved into Formula 3000 with backing from Telefonica. He raced for Team Astromega and won the Spa race and finished fourth in the series. He was signed to a management contract by Flavio Briatore and as a result was soon named as a Minardi test driver and in 2001 became the number one driver for the team, which had just been bought by Australia's Paul Stoddart. After an impressive first season Alonso took the decision to become the Renault test driver in 2002, in the knowledge that he would graduate to the race team in 2003. He joined Renault as expected and with the impressive R23 was able to well and won his first victory in Hungary in August. Life was rather more difficult in 2004 but in 2005 he was a strong challenger early in the season and then settled back to defend a World Championship lead. He did this with much maturity and as a result won the World Championship, becoming the youngest ever F1 title winner. Within a couple of months, however, it was announced that he would be moving to McLaren in 2007. Despite this Alonso stayed on at Renault in 2006 and won the world title for a second time.

The move to McLaren did not prove a success. Alonso quickly found himself overshadowed by new kid on the block, Lewis Hamilton, his own teammate. Furthermore he was implicated in a spy scandal when it was revealed that Ferrari information had been leaked to McLaren. Four wins were not enough to get the Championship and, once the season was over, he returned to Renault.