He said he had faith they would make progress, but he never believed it would happen this quickly. Since then, he has been in a kind of competitive purgatory, his status as an all-time great secure, but his talents held back by his machinery.Īlonso left Alpine for Aston Martin this year believing in the vision and finance of owner Lawrence Stroll, and accepting it was probably - at the age of 41 - his last team. It was 2013 - 10 years ago - that he last had a car capable of regularly being on the podium.

But it was one of only two top-three finishes in a poor year for Ferrari which led to him negotiating an exit from his contract two years early because he had lost faith in the team's ability to deliver him a competitive car. He scored a podium for Alpine in Qatar in 2021, but that was a performance that transcended the car's natural level that year.īefore that, his last podium was for Ferrari in Hungary in 2014, another great drive in a chaotic race in which his skills came to the fore. Notwithstanding the crushing superiority of the Red Bulls, Alonso has had a long wait to get his hands on a car as competitive as this. 'And we found ourselves second-best car today in Bahrain, or the whole weekend, just behind Red Bull.

But even a podium was maybe not on the radar.

'The aim in 2023 was getting in the mix in the midfield, leading that midfield and getting close to the top three teams. 'We didn't expect to be that competitive,' Alonso said.

And while Aston Martin had looked impressive in pre-season testing, even Alonso did not expect them to be as good as they turned out to be.īefore the cars turned a wheel on the race weekend, Alonso told this writer over coffee last Thursday morning that he was thinking about qualifying in the lower reaches of the top 10 and perhaps finishing in the top five or six.īut his was probably the second fastest car in the field at Sakhir on Sunday, and the delicious moves he pulled on Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes and Carlos Sainz's Ferrari in the closing stages sparked into life a race that, at the front, had long since become soporific. Verstappen's superiority was expected by most - even if the extent of it left his title rival of last year, Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, in a downcast mood. The remarkable rise to the front of Alonso and his Aston Martin team was the story of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Race cars to play