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Alonso reflects: 'I always had to compete with less than others'
The experienced Fernando Alonso will began his 22nd season in Formula One in 2025. Reflecting on his career so far, the Spaniard pointed out adapting to situations as a key, something he has been doing since he began karting.
Alonso always behind in terms of his package
43-year-old Fernando Alonso is still preparing for every F1 season trying to improve and to get the best out of his cars. Chasing victory number 33 and possibly another shot at the world title in the 2026 season, if everything goes to Lawrence Stroll's plan at Aston Martin, the driver sees that he has always been on the backfoot one way or another.
Similarly to Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton, Alonso could put down many great performances in rainy conditions. When he was younger, the Spanish driver had to already to deal with a different challenge in such conditions. "Since I was little I only had one kart and, when I started driving, one set of tyres, and in Asturias it rains a lot. When it rained, all the children put on rain tyres and I raced with dry tyres, because we didn't have money to buy rain tyres," he said in DAZN's programme called Decoded.
He continued: "And that continues to this day. Here we all have the resources for wet tyres, but we don't have the wings that Ferrari have, or the floors that McLaren have, or anything like that. It's been a bit of a story of my life, competing with slightly inferior weaponry to others and adapting as much as I could."
Still, to this day, Alonso is as hungry for success as ever, something he hopes to achieve with Aston Martin and Adrian Newey as their top designer. "After twenty-something years, if I go karting and I look at the time table and I'm second, a tenth or half a tenth behind the first, I have the same inner rage, the same frustration, the same anger and I might not even have dinner that night," he concluded.
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