The Hidden Biography of Fernando Alonso, By Ilaria Costanzo

Ilaria is a fellow F1 blogger and a regular sight on my blog. I have recently interviewed her as part of my F1 2011 season review. We decided mutually that we would do a winter F1 blog swap. Being Italian I could tell a Ferrari article was coming up, and look what the topic is. Fernando Alonso, who drives for Italy's most famous F1 team.

(c) Octane Photographic

Click "read more" to see Ilaria's alternative Fernando Alonso biography, telling us the secrets of the Spanish drivers career.


I will now hand you over to Ilaria..

Many people have written a Fernando Alonso's biography, talking about his races, titles, issues with McLaren and many others topics, which now are well known by every F1 fan. But not everyone knows some curiosities about his start of career and his private life. For example, Fernando in 2001 refused a seat from Ferrari, accepting a Renault contract which consisted in one year at Minardi, the next as a tester in Renault and then as an official driver; Ferrari didn't give him guarantees: one year he could be an official driver, and the next day a tester.

We are in the Italian race track Fiorano, Fernando is seventeen. There was a test to enter into F1, but the weather wasn't helping, as it was raining; some drivers started the test, and then it was Alonso's round: he drove extremely fast, maybe too fast, and Cesare Fiorio, who was selecting the drivers, got scared about his speed. He immediately called him back in the boxes, and he said that he was crazy for driving so fast, his first lap on an F1 car, under the rain. Fernando answered: "But I'm driving slowly", and that was true, as he humiliated all the other testers when came back on the track.
Fernando Alonso has never liked F1 much, he's a very shy person, he declared even that he would like to have a normal life, to be invisible. His target was to win 3 world championships, but now that's he's at Ferrari he changed his mind, because -as he says- he feels like it's in a family, with people who have the same objectives and feelings. His father suggested him to go to Ferrari (and not to RBR which offered him a seat too that year), in fact he trusts him more than every people in the World. Another important figure in his private life was his grandmother: when she passed away in the summer of 2009 he was extremely sad, and he said he couldn't find a reason to wake up in the morning.

(c) Octane Photographic

The Spanish driver doesn't like media, doesn't use the social networks and rarely appear in events which aren't related with the work. Once has been in Sanremo Festival, a prestigious music event in Italy where his wife was singing: the presenter was so happy that called him on the stage to talk! Journalist aren't Fernando's best friends, as he was often accused by them during his racing career. But it hasn't been always so: when he firstly entered in F1, he asked an Italian journalist to make him an interview, to be known from people, but the journalist couldn't help him, as he was a test driver and so TV wouldn't have appreciated such an useless interview. Just to say, this journalist asked him an interview in 2010 after his first victory with Ferrari in 2010, and fortunately got it.

For his personality, Fernando remains an extremely popular face in the paddock, not just for his competitiveness; he is different from all the others, with his isolate and sometimes grumpy character; but the fans learnt to appreciate him, as he knows how to amuse people, for example with his card tricks. He's superstitious, every time he goes to a Gp he makes a weird operation, which has to have 14 as a result: he combines the number of drivers, his number of helmet and the hotel's room number. Unluckily on the 14th of November he lost his championship last year.

Thanks Ilaria for that, follow her on Twitter and read her blog.