Alonso: The ability to adapt has always been the norm for me

This year Fernando Alonso should reach the milestone of 400 Grand Prix, which in itself seems incredible, and at the end of July the two-time world champion will celebrate his 43rd birthday.

At the same time, the Spaniard is still in enviable form and Canada once again showed his skills: during the first 25 laps he was fifth on the wet asphalt of the Montreal circuit, holding off the attack and fending off Lewis Hamilton’s attacks. , although the Mercedes car was clearly faster than Aston Martin.

“It was clear that Lewis would go ahead of me, he was faster, but at least he didn’t do it on the track, he had to do it at the expense of a pit stop,” the Madrid newspaper quotes Marca Fernando, who eventually achieved 6th place. – The ability to adapt to different conditions must be learned from an early age. I remember training as a go-kart driver in my hometown of Oviedo from the age of six to eleven. The climate there is such that the weather is constantly changing, and I had no rain tires.

Initially, we had the only set of tires on the card when we bought them, and I rode them all the time, regardless of weather conditions.

I already had quite a bit of experience for my age, and I always shared my opinion when I thought something was going wrong. From the age of six I often rode karts of other children older than me, even karts intended for adults, which didn’t suit me very well, but I tried to adapt.

Since the beginning of my career, the need to adapt has been the norm for me. In every season, in every race you have to discover something new in yourself and always try to stay ahead of your rivals. Starting with karting you will learn how to defend your position, how to take full advantage of your car’s capabilities and strengths. This can be the maximum speed, the acceleration dynamics, efficient operation at high or low speeds…

And then you choose which parts of the track to attack to prevent the driver behind from doing so, and where you can drive a little slower to save tires or fuel, so that you can benefit from that in the later stages. of the breed.

When the end of your career is approaching, you already have a lot of experience, you have already tried all kinds of approaches to setting up the car and you understand how it will react to certain changes, how it will behave on a specific track and in specific conditions . Therefore, you can immediately offer the team this or that solution. The brain of a racer can be compared to the hard drive of a computer, on which everything you know is recorded, and in difficult moments you turn to this information. There are times during the race when you enter a special state where everything happens automatically, because you can drive the car without using your mental abilities. Then you start asking the engineer questions about other cars, about your partner.

Sometimes you can see on large screens along the track that one of your direct rivals has gone to the pits and is being fitted with hard tires. And then you immediately find out how this team will proceed: will they drive to the finish on these tires or will they plan another pit stop, as we expected?

Every time you drive a race car, you learn something. This information may be more or less useful in that particular situation, but after some time you may find yourself again in similar conditions, where there will be exactly the same level of grip and balance of the car.

And then you go to the information that is on your “hard drive”. The more laps you do in a race car, the more experience you have, the more knowledge you have about different tracks, different conditions, and that can give you an edge.

Over the years of my career I have participated in different types of racing, but I have always adhered to the same principle: I always strive to improve, I am motivated by the desire to improve, I am always unhappy with the position in which I am. in now. I want to be better the next day, next week, next month. That’s why I’m still active.”