The Dream Starts Here

‘How did I meet my wife? It was on a TV programme. They’d invited me as the guest. Along with the guest they also invite one or two groups. I had seen Raquel on TV and I liked her, but I didn’t know her. So I asked them to invite her group. At the end of the programme I succeeded in getting her phone number…’

If the track engineers – with whom Alonso is having lunch – had any doubts about their new driver, they don’t now. He is clearly determined to achieve every goal he sets himself.

The restaurant where Alonso meets his engineers is the Cavallino, the Ferrari restaurant. After the official introductions, we move on with the questions.

Needless to say, Alonso has arrived at Maranello full of enthusiasm. The man who often looks reserved seems to have changed now he is part of a new family. ‘I don’t know if I’ve changed. The truth is that when journalists pounce on you right after the race, you’re tired and you don’t always feel like smiling. But that’s the way I am and I feel good in Italy. There’s passion here, as there is in Spain. And in the team, the spirit is right.’

There’s no doubt that the relationship has started off on the right foot. Around the table the curiosity about the new driver leads to more questions. ‘When did you start racing?’ asks Antonio Spagnolo, vehicle engineer. ‘I started racing at the age of three,’ Alonso replies. ‘My father built a kart for my sister, but she wasn’t interested. So he modified it and put me into it. I came last, but now I had my karting licence. I thought I was pretty good because, since I was so small, there was a lot of interest in me. Then, when I was 12 or 13, an Italian team asked me to come and race here. So I came and things went well straightaway.’

The questions turn to Alonso the family man. We soon find out that Fernando is passionate about cooking. ‘I like to prepare food, it relaxes me.’ His engineers also discover that he has bought a house in Lugano so as to be near ‘work’. ‘I’ll be able to come and work on the simulator. It’s very useful for studying tracks and to keep yourself in training, now that you can’t drive too much in testing.’

Despite their busy life, Fernando and his wife like to live as normally as possible. ‘We like to go to the cinema. And I love to cycle, I do a lot of it, even in winter.’


The next question, from Claudio Albertini, is exquisitely Spanish: ‘We’ve seen you dressed up as a bullfighter,’ he says, ‘do you like the corrida? Do you have a bullfighter’s DNA?’

‘No,’ Alonso says quickly. ‘They dressed me up as one for a photo shoot once, but I don’t like animals to suffer. You could do the same thing without killing the bull, without even hurting it. F1 is different, it’s no bullfight.’

Yes, F1. Even though the car is still being assembled, the engineers are concentrating on a season that looks like being competitive. For Alonso, there will be internal competition from Massa and then there are rivals like Vettel, Hamilton and Schumacher. It promises to be an epic season.

And now the ‘serious’ questions start, the questions about work.

‘What do you want from the radio? Should we tell you everything or do you not want to be bothered?’ asks Andrea Stella, race engineer. ‘I like to know what the others are doing. I want to know when they make their pit stops, if it’s gone well or if they’ve lost time,’ replies Alonso.

‘Do you want to know where you’re gaining on your opponents?

‘No, I can feel that on my own… I use the split time to quickly see the partial times. That’s useful in a race.’

More questions. ‘What were the qualities that enabled you to win two World Championships?’

‘First, I had a great car. [Plus] I think I have an ability to adapt to things I’m not familiar with. I can understand a new track in only a few laps.’

The talk gets serious when it turns to the 2010 car, and the rule changes that mean it has to start with a full tank of fuel.

‘It’s going to be tricky,’ Alonso concedes. ‘We’ll have gone through qualifying with an extremely light car, and then we’ll have to start with 200 litres more – without even having had a warm-up in race conditions. Braking distances will change.’

Alonso’s engineering team know him better now they’ve seen him relaxed. And he, too, now knows his engineers. He knows they’ll work well together. There is one final question… ‘Are you superstitious?’

‘When everything’s going right then I’d like certain things to be repeated… and, then, certain numbers, perhaps adding up to the number of the hotel room you’ve been given.’ He smiles, and stops. The pragmatic and careful man is superstitious. But since he is hardly lacking in positive qualities, let’s make a recommendation to Andrea Stella: always check beforehand the number of the room given to Fernando…

Abril 2010
Ferrari Magazine