You’ve got to love Alonso’s comments sometimes. Whether he’s frustratingly saying Honda has built a GP2 engine or claiming that his Le Mans win was “on a higher level than any other victory at Le Mans”, he usually causes a bit of a stir.
Now he’s added another bit of gold. There were some murmurings that Alonso might have had a hand in the recent changes at McLaren. He denied that, saying he wasn’t consulted on the restructure, and added that the only thing he’d know about managing a team is knowing which drivers to choose. He then took that opportunity to imply that McLaren’s current driver line-up couldn’t be improved upon.
“I have no idea of people, I can only suggest drivers, they are the only ones I meet on the track. I will not suggest Zak [Brown] drivers, because I think he has the best two drivers in the world.”
In saying that, he’s not just implying that he’s the best driver in the world, but that Stoffel Vandoorne is also better than the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. In turn that makes Alonso look even better, because he’s trouncing Vandoorne – after qualifying in France, he made the point of how highly-rated Vandoorne was, and how he’d outqualified him 8-0 this season (now 9-0).
At times you wonder what his goal is. We all expect F1 drivers to indulge in a bit of self-promotion, but Fernando’s career situation has left him doing it so often and for so many years that surely he must know how transparent it sounds, right? After all, he’s a clever chap. Is he just doing it for fun to see what the most ridiculous thing he can get away with saying is? Either way, it’s incredibly entertaining – just imagine what he might come out with once he’s no longer in F1…
