{"id":290202,"date":"2025-07-25T09:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T09:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/290202\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T09:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T09:16:15","slug":"fans-dont-realise-car-matters-much-more-than-driver-in-f1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/290202\/","title":{"rendered":"Fans don’t realise car matters much more than driver in F1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 fans overestimate the significance of the role played by drivers in winning races, says Fernando Alonso<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two-times world champion believes many fans don\u2019t realise drivers cannot win races if their car is not competitive enough.<\/p>\n

Alonso has gone 12 years without winning a race. The 43-year-old\u2019s best chance of ending his victory drought may rest on whether Aston Martin can produce a competitive car for the new regulations which will arrive next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fans and the people outside watching TV, they don\u2019t have the full picture of what is going on and the difference in performance between the cars,\u201d said the Aston Martin driver in today\u2019s FIA press conference.<\/p>\n

He and Sauber\u2019s Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> were asked whether the new fans attracted to F1 by Drive to Survive and the new movie should expect to see experienced drivers such as them winning races next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf next year Nico and myself have winning cars and we win eight consecutive races and fight for the championship, then they will think that we ate something different in winter or had a different training programme and we learned how to drive in the winter,\u201d said Alonso. \u201cThis is not really the reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe train every day, eat every day, travel every day, go to the simulator every day. We try to be better and better every day with our teams. When we achieve a result, we just try to share it with them and our fans around the world \u2014 but they are not in our priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alonso stressed he did not intend to be \u201crude\u201d towards fans of F1. \u201cWe love the fans but we don\u2019t think about [whether] they realise how good or bad we drive. That is more for the team and the technical aspect of the sport, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only try to win races, try to work with our team the best we can, and deliver the performance,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

With McLaren increasingly untouchable in the constructors\u2019 championship and either Oscar Piastri<\/a> or Lando Norris likely to win the drivers\u2019 title, Alonso believes most drivers and teams are now prioritising next season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think 80% of the focus is already on 2026, in a way,\u201d he said. \u201cNot only on the engineers and the design team, it\u2019s also the driver\u2019s head, apart from maybe the two McLaren drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rest of us, we are just thinking a little bit and dreaming about what could be a good season next year, because this year is going to change very little, I think, in the second part.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fun to see all the midfield so close and maybe there is some action between all the midfielders in the second part of the season and it will be a fight for fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth in the constructors\u2019 championship. But apart from that I think there is not much more to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll try to learn, keep improving, try to work with the team in the best way possible. And as I said, in terms of points every two or three weekends, try to see the constructors\u2019 championship and have some fun there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2025 Belgian Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2025 Belgian Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 fans overestimate the significance of the role played by drivers in winning races, says Fernando Alonso.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[107777,4199,6319,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-290202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-2025-belgian-grand-prix","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-fernando-alonso","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114913122675838784","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}