Fernando Alonso has reflected on his infamous 2015 “GP2 engine” radio rant over his McLaren’s Honda power unit, as he faces further drama alongside the Japanese marque, amid its ongoing Formula 1 struggles with Aston Martin.
Rejoining McLaren in 2015 after his one-year stint in 2007, Alonso was placed into an unenviable position, as its Honda engine proved to make his and the team’s quest for results difficult.
During the campaign, Alonso launched a few choice words about the distinct lack of power it possessed, infamously calling it a “GP2 engine” in that year’s Japanese Grand Prix, as he watched himself be helplessly overtaken by a rivalling Toro Rosso car.
The rant has landed itself into modern, meme-oriented F1 folklore, and has been attached to the Spaniard ever since.
Today, he faces a similar problem, with the current Honda power unit in his Aston Martin AMR26 proving to be even more bothersome.
Gripped by battery shortages and vibrations that could apparently cause him “permanent nerve damage,” Alonso is now on another crusade to help another car held back by an underperforming Honda-badged engine.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, Alonso ruminated on the issue he faced then, indicating a lack of fairness that he was singled-out as the solitary McLaren driver to complain about the engine.
“About the 10 year difference, I think I can see things now in a different perspective and a different maturity, but I don’t think that 10 years ago, things were that dramatic,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“This is Formula 1, very mediatised sport. When you win a few championships just racing against your teammate, you know you are God. And then when you are fighting and having some difficult period, everything is magnified as well.
“And in a way, 10 years later, some of the things that people thought about me 10 years ago, when we had this situation, now they maybe change opinion, and maybe they think that I was right 10 years ago.
“Because for me, the biggest surprise was all these last few years thinking that 10 years ago, McLaren, Stoffel, Jenson, myself – because always people seem to remember only Fernando – but I think Jenson, Stoffel and McLaren, we were saying the same, and that project, the power unit, was not mature enough when we started, which everyone seems now to understand that.
“But like, two or three years ago, it seems that I was crazy. 10 years ago, like criticising or something like that. It was, I think, a few frustrations on the radio, which, yeah, it was there, and as a double World Champion and a competitive driver, I was not happy with the situation. Well, I should be happy and clapping inside the car about the job.”
Fernando Alonso rallies the troops to ‘try to help Honda as much as we can’
Alonso continued that the 2015 rant may now be identified with a little more context than it previous has been, hoping that it will now enable a little more ‘understanding’ of what he faced then, along with what he faces currently.
“So, you know, now I think when everyone sees from the outside that situation, and they see the current situation, I think they are a little bit more friendly with us, and a little bit more they understand more the problems,” he said.
“And now what can I do in the team? It’s just work harder, try to help Honda as much as we can, allocating some of the resources that Aston Martin has into the engine, into the power unit, into the vibration problems, into the deployment issues.
“Obviously we are now in a different world in Formula 1, with all the data available, all the GPS, all the analysis that we can have from the other teams. And we can allocate some of those resources to make Honda focus on one thing, and we can help them in some other areas on the power unit.
“So we are one team. As I said, it’s a bumpy start, but I hope you will not last for too long, but it will not be an immediate solution, either.”
Alonso is never one to mince his words, which perhaps can lead to a conclusion that he genuinely seems genuinely buoyed and motivated to remedy this situation.
Maybe it is because the two-time World Champion is now in the autumn of his career, coupled with the unwillingness to switch teams one more time before calling time on his superb career.
But regardless, Alonso must be seen, along with Adrian Newey, Andy Cowell and Lawrence Stroll, as a figurehead in ensuring Honda sorts its troubles out to give him, and his team as a whole, the chance to compete in F1’s new uncertain world.
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