Is Fernando Alonso poor at choosing future teams? F1 pundits give their take

F1 pundits Edd Straw and Glenn Freeman analysed the decisions made by two-time world champion Fernando Alonso while switching teams during his 20-year-long career.

The Aston Martin F1 driver joined his current team at the start of the 2023 season from Alpine in a high-profile move, replacing the retiring four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. In his illustrious career, the Spaniard is known for jumping ship at the wrong time after not seeing much progress.

Since arriving in F1 in 2001, Alonso has raced for five different teams and gone back to his championship-winning team Renault thrice. On The Race podcast, Straw said:

"I'm convinced that it's the part of the psychology of makes him want to still do F1. He's 42 in a couple of months, so I think it's a big thing. I think there is this sense of unfinished business. It's funny if you ask him about his past decisions, he'll say, 'No, it's all fine, and it was all the right moves'. But no one can say that."

Freeman added about Fernando Alonso:

"He's got that reputation of every decision he makes and everywhere he goes, it's a bad decision. Over the winter, when we were all wondering out loud, was Aston Martin the right place to go? I'd go back to all of his decisions to try and work out how good or bad I thought they were, and in the circumstances, I wasn't super critical of many of them."

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“I think he’s as good as anybody on race day" - F1 pundit on Fernando Alonso

F1 pundit Peter Windsor said that Fernando Alonso is still as good as anyone in races. In his live stream on YouTube, Windsor said:

“I think he’s as good as anybody on race day. I don’t think he’s as great a qualifier as four or five other guys out there at the moment but very, very good on race day. A very difficult driver politically to run in the team, and you can see that already at Aston Martin, the way he’s over the top (with) comments about how good Lance is and helping Lance – none of which the true Alonso would really be interested in at all."

He continued:

“You can see he’s just trying to build up a whole sort of ‘we love Fernando’ thing at Aston Martin, and one day, it’ll all come crashing down probably, knowing poor old Fernando. We’ll see how that goes, (but) maybe it’ll work?

It will be interesting to see if Fernando Alonso can guide Aston Martin to title glory.