The last time Fernando Alonso teamed up with a highly rated rookie was with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren and that turned out to be a highly toxic partnership, now exactly a decade later the Spaniard welcomes Stoffel Vandoorne to the team.
Looking back on 2007, McLaren supremo recalled, “Fernando calculated everything, but not that Lewis could challenge him.”
Will history repeat itself in 2017?
Alonso told Spanish newspaper AS, “Let’s see what Stoffel is like. I’m not worried, I’m not afraid. Our goal is a different one. We must fight [on track], but also work together and help the team to make this difficult time we are in as short as possible.”
“To be a rookie and get points at once is not easy, he did it well,” acknowledged Alonso in reference to Vandoorne’s grand prix debut last year in Bahrain, where the Belgian stood in for the Spaniard who was deemed unfit to race in the aftermath of his huge accident at the Australian Grand Prix.
But Alonso does not fear Vandoorne and points to his career as an example of how he deals with top rated youngsters, “When I went back to Renault, it was [Nelson] Piquet. Then came [Romain] Grosjean, who also said that he was fast. He was not.”
He joined Ferrari in 2010 and recalls, “Massa had been with Ferrari for years and he was not faster than me. Then came Kimi Raikkonen, everyone said he was a world champion, but he too was not faster.”
35 year old Alonso has won 32 grands prix in his 273 race starts, but since his return to McLaren in 2015 he has not visited the podium and victory alludes him since he last stood on the top step of the podium at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.
Read the full story at GRAND PRIX 247
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