Is Fernando Alonso the right man to lead Ferrari?

Fernando Alonso

Disappointment at Monza

“In debt to Monza” is what the subject line read in the Ferrari newsletter sent to subscribed fans (me included) after a disappointing finish for both its drivers at the team’s home GP in Italy. The performance of the Maranello team has been dismal this season with no race wins and a solitary podium finish in China and the story was no different in Monza. Clearly, things haven’t gone as planned for Ferrari. While Fernando Alonso has maintained a decent pace despite problems such as the Ferrari engine being down on power and the car’s visible lack of pace compared to its rivals.

Alonso is still fifth in the drivers' championship and has scored bulk of the team’s total of 162. Kimi Raikkonen, however, finds himself in a spot as his comeback to the Italian team has been uncompetitve to say the least. Before the start of the season, the battle between two former World Champions was touted as an epic one but it has uptil now been just one sided with Alonso having the upper hand in qualifying and in most of the races.

There are multiple questions that arise from another season let-down for Ferrari and one of them being is Fernando Alonso the right man to lead Ferrari?

Lack of a competitive car?

Alonso is a competitive driver, but to get the things into perspective, this is Alonso’s fifth season with Ferrari and all this while he has managed to get only 11 victories. This quite evidently indicates that Ferrari have struggled to give its drivers a competitive car. Compare that to the Red-Bull transformation and domination in Formula One for the past four years much thanks to Sebastian Vettel and Adrian Newey. On the other hand, given his talent and experience in Formula One Alonso has tried to get the maximum out of his car each time. He was playing catch-up for the last four seasons and ended up finishing 2nd in the driver’s tally in 3 of them.

There are numbers that support Alonso’s case and quite a few F1 pundits that believe that no one else could have performed better than Alonso given the Ferrari situation. But then there are others who feel Ferrari have always had the concept of a star driver leading the charge and dictating terms in the pit-garage and car setups. That in a way has affected their growth and resulting in a downward trend.

It’s been six years since the team has gone without winning a Formula One Championship which has caused quite a stir in the company. Marco Mattiacci, who replaced Stefano Domenicali as the team underwent a slump resulting their worst run in almost 20 years. The team now is under a huge risk of going winless for the first time since 1993 with Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger on the steering wheels. Ferrari president Luca Di Montezemolo will resign next month due to this situation.

While Alonso has maintained that he would want to go ahead with Ferrari in 2015, rumour mills are running overtime with the news that he is looking at a move to Mclaren given that Honda is ready to power the British team next season.

"I've always said that I want to stay with Ferrari and if there are no big changes I'll stay for at least another two years,but we need to evaluate and work on maintaining this marriage in a winning manner", Alonso was quoted as saying responding to the Mclaren rumours. With six races to go ,it doesn’t seem as if Ferrari have something extra ordinary lined up which might help them become competitve. But one can be rest assured that Alonso would be looking to find last bit of energy in the car to get the best possible result. That’s how a talented driver should be but then a competitve car is what he needs to win races.