Spanish Grand Prix: Fernando Alonso aims to bring form in World Endurance Championships to F1

The Circuit di Catalunya is where the 2018 McLaren is being tipped to shine

Alonso is hoping to replicate his good form in Spain (Getty)

Five years is a long time between drinks. And it took a while, after Fernando Alonso’s maiden victory in the World Endurance Championship race for Toyota at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend –it’s been that long since he last won a major international race. Coincidentally, that was the Spanish Grand Prix here at the Circuit di Catalunya, back in 2013.

“I keep my motivation because I am a competitive man,” he smiled here on Thursday, ahead of the race in which his fans want to see him shine, and in which the truth of McLaren’s 2018 will finally emerge.

“I love to race and I love to win,” Alonso added. “And that’s what we did here in 2013. The tyres were degrading a lot that year so with Ferrari we did an extra stop and managed win race, and not with quickest car. Nico (Rosberg) was on pole by six-tenths, so our strategy was a good call by the team.”

Between that race and last week’s sportscar event, the man still rated as Lewis Hamilton’s sternest competition has struggled to get results, but not to keep his fearsome motivation. How so?

“2014 was a difficult season,” he said of the year which finally broke the back of his relationship with Ferrari and leave to start his fraught battle with the Honda-engined McLaren. “In the last three years the project was always getting difficult and we were always trying to give hope for the following year.

“The win at Spa definitely felt good. It’s been a long time not to be on the podium, and it has been good to attack the preparation for the WEC. There’s been a lot of testing and simulator work. I kept studying hard after the F1 race at Baku, watching onboard footage from the previous year. It was nice for Toyota to get 1-2 in qualifying and then 1-2 in race, a good moment for team.”

But it was not, he said, a relief after all the misfortune he’s encountered failing to get close to the two world championships he won in the mid-noughties with Renault.

“Those WEC races are quite long and difficult to predict; you can be feeling confident in the first two hours and then suddenly that changes. At Spa we had drama with a pit stop [team-mate Kazuki Nakajima had to stop again to have his seat belts tightened]. But it was nice to get the experience warming up for the Big One, Le Mans, in a few weeks’ time.

Alonso competed in the WEC last time out (Getty)

“But the win doesn’t change anything ahead of this weekend’s grand prix. They are two different series and two different worlds, so it won’t change anything for me.

“I think a struggle a little bit more going from the F1 car into the WEC sportscar, because the driving styles you need are so different, but when I come back here there is no need for any adaptation, straight away I will be very comfortable with everything. My driving style has been developed for an F1 car so I don’t expect any problem. I am closer to the limit here in the F1 car, maximising perfection on every lap, because that’s the F1 style.

“In WEC you have to be super-flexible and super open-minded on everything. You won’t repeat the same lap time for all of the six hours, because of things such as traffic, road conditions, different rates of tyre degradations… That flexibility in terms of driving is quite good for me, because you have to make that adaptation very quickly. That is part of the special side of WEC, how unpredictable it can be. Whereas in F1 you can write in the paper who is quickest in qualifying here, and then again in Monaco and Canada and so on, because it doesn’t change. That is sad for F1.

“But what Spa said is that whenever I have a car close to victory, I will go for it. In the last five years I did much better races – the Baku race was great. There was probably no race better than I did there.”

After an incident on the opening lap left his McLaren with two punctures, he made it back to the pits and recovered to finish seventh.

The way things are as they recover with their Renault propulsion, that was a great result for McLaren. Here, race director Eric Boullier has promised that the “2018” McLaren will finally appear, as a raft of updates aims to enhance the new car’s performance on what will thus be a crucial weekend.

“We are behind, definitely not in the position we wanted or expected.”

Last year the belief within the team was that they had the best chassis, let down by Honda’s well-publicised shortcomings. But the speed on occasion of the Toro Rosso, now running the Honda engine, and McLaren’s failure to engage with the Red Bull and Renault teams which use the same power plant as McLaren, suggest that a lot more work is needed from the Woking team. Technical director Tim Goss was recently removed from that position as a result of the under-performance.

Alonso was quick to point out that McLaren are the only team to finish both cars in each of the four races held thus far this season, to place them fourth overall, and Alonso sixth in the drivers’ points table. Ahead of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

“Three months ago testing here we did the fewest laps of any single team and reliability seemed a concern going into the opening race in Australia. But now we are happy with that.

“Competition-wise we are not yet qualifying in the top 10, but that may come this weekend. Hopefully our upgrades can up the pace a little bit. Let’s see, but most important is to keep scoring points and to keep that fourth place.”

Asked what he expected from the updates here, his answer was a poignant reminder of how his talent has been wasted for so long, and encapsulated everything he has been seeking during his five years in the wilderness: “A faster car!”