Abu Dhabi marked a full-circle moment for Fernando Alonso.

It was almost a year to the day since he first drove an Aston Martin Formula One car — unbranded, as Alonso was still under contract with Alpine at the time. He was in the mood to reflect.

“It was unthinkable 12 months ago to think about the campaign we did,” Alonso said.

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Alonso is regarded as one of F1’s all-time greats, whose bad timing and occasional bad choices have undersold his ability and achievements. In 2023, the legendary Spaniard finally returned to the front with his new team in tow.

Aston Martin’s leap forward over the winter stunned the F1 pack. Alonso’s podium in his Aston Martin debut in Bahrain immediately justified his call to leave Alpine. It would be the first of eight for Alonso over a year that far outstripped the team’s expectations.

And so much of that is due to Alonso’s influence and performance.

“I think, together with 2012, it’s the best season for me, personally,” Alonso said. He was at his peak in that 2012 campaign, when he lost the title to Sebastian Vettel by just three points despite the limitations of his Ferrari car. “I rate (these) the best seasons in my driving.”

There were many magic Alonso moments this season. The way he delivered on the preseason testing hype in Bahrain. The performance in Monaco, where he put Max Verstappen behind the eight-ball on strategy and came within one correct pit call of victory. The charge to second in Canada. The last-lap duel against Sergio Pérez in Brazil for third, ending with a move that served as a reminder of Alonso’s enduring class.

A simply extraordinary battle between Alonso and Perez ⚔️

Make sure you watch the full edit on our official YouTube channel 🍿#F1 #BrazilGP

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 7, 2023

Alonso puts all four of these races among his best of the season. The fifth? A seemingly nondescript drive to ninth at Monza. “It was not a podium, it was nothing that people will remember,” Alonso said. “But probably we had the slowest car at Monza or the second slowest. And to be in the points, it was one of those weekends where everything was very good.”

Alonso’s intentions with Aston Martin were evident from the very start. In that Abu Dhabi test a year ago, two days after the 2022 season finale, Alonso made a point of being the first driver out of the pit lane when the light went green. As the team went through preseason preparations, it found him incredibly demanding. Alonso required the best out of everyone and everything around him. Tom McCullough, Aston Martin’s performance director, likened the Spaniard to an “extra, very experienced, good engineer.” It was the push Aston Martin needed. As good as Vettel had been, he lacked the same all-out drive as Alonso as he neared retirement.

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“We have a driver here where you think it’s his first season,” Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s team principal, said of Alonso. “He was just full of energy, not only driving us but driving himself.” Krack joked he would come into the team’s Silverstone office and find Alonso already sitting there, ready to greet them with a sarcastic, “Good afternoon!”

“We are a much better team now than 12 months ago,” Krack said. “Obviously, this is also credit to others, not only to Fernando. But I think this has really made us improve much, much more than we would have if he was not there.”

At Alpine, Alonso was frustrated by a team that could not give him a reliable car and one that would not commit to him long-term. Aston Martin has given Alonso the platform to dream of that elusive 33rd career win over a decade after his 32nd.

“Even if you are very motivated, even if you are very determined to achieve things, if the results are not coming in the medium or long-term, this is impossible to keep it up,” Alonso said. He admitted the knowledge that a podium or even a win was possible on weekends when everything was perfectly executed gives “a very different love for the things you do.”

Alonso said he could see “only positives” from Aston Martin this year. But it would be incorrect to say it was all upside.

After coming out of the blocks red hot, Aston Martin struggled to keep up with Mercedes and Ferrari in the development race and was leapfrogged by the resurgent McLaren. Lando Norris commented in Mexico that it seemed Aston Martin “made the car slower and slower with every upgrade.” Alonso went from six podiums in the first seven races to score two in the final 14 rounds from Austria, where McLaren debuted its first major upgrade.

Norris wasn’t wrong. Aston Martin’s upgrades narrowed the performance window of the AMR23 car, making it less forgiving to drive than in the early part of the year and more challenging to set up. It also lacked the straight-line speed of the rival cars, something remedied by trimming out the rear wing, which then hurt performance through the corners. Alonso said it was “a loop that we could not get out of this season.”

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“(We) found ourselves maybe in a position that we were not ready for it, fighting with Mercedes, Ferrari, top teams,” he added. “They are used to fighting at that level. We maybe stepped back a little bit in terms of development of the car during the season.”

Krack acknowledged maintaining “a very high level of development” was something the team had to work on, as well as sharpening race operations and improving the tools used to advance the car’s performance. A simulation mistake triggered the Austin upgrade backfiring so badly that Alonso returned to the older specification.

Then there was the underperformance of Alonso’s teammate, Lance Stroll, the son of team owner Lawrence. Stroll fought valiantly in the early part of the year after breaking both his wrists and a toe in a preseason cycling crash, going through a remarkable recovery period to make the season’s first race. Some days, he showed the underlying pace, like qualifying third at Interlagos or his run to fifth in Las Vegas, races where the car setup was more to his liking.

But the early fall slump, including the crash in Singapore that meant he couldn’t participate in the race, was a rough period for Stroll. He ended the year with barely a third of Alonso’s points haul. The Spaniard hailed their “unique relationship” and Stroll’s motivation and dedication, something he said “was a surprise,” and has previously talked about getting the team into a position where, once he retires, Stroll can fight for world titles. The team must see a significant reduction in the gap between them to believe that is possible.

Right now, neither side gives thought to a post-Alonso Aston Martin. There is a fresh vigor from Alonso, who will turn 43 in 2024, to go with the hunger and tenacity that sustained him through the fallow years at McLaren and Alpine. And he does not see a scenario where he loses his edge on track.

“If I feel slow one day, I think it will be noticeable, and I will be not happy with my performance, and I will be the first one to raise my hand and say, ‘OK, this is time,’” Alonso said. “But I don’t think that time will arrive, honestly, in terms of feeling slow. I have extreme self-confidence in my performance.”

It is what makes Alonso such an anomaly in F1. Few drivers nowadays race into their early 40s, let alone give thought to extending careers well beyond that mark. Most acknowledge a time comes when they start to slow down. Alonso is nowhere near that point yet, but especially with the pressures of an ever-growing calendar, Aston Martin must consider the future without him.

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But the team will enjoy the good times until then. Krack knows Aston Martin is onto a good thing with Alonso, whose relentless push for the best can lead the team toward its goal of being an F1 powerhouse.

“If we maintain the dynamics and the collaboration that we have now,” Krack said, “we can go on forever.”

(Lead image: Dan Mullan/Getty Images)