“Chris, I will win a Grand Prix before you do.” These were Enzo Ferrari’s parting words to the luckless Chris Amon.
Having endured three years peddling a sluggish and unreliable Ferrari 312, the talented New Zealander strode out of Maranello at the end of 1969, confident that a Max Mosley-run March Cosworth would be the tonic he required to fight again at the front of Formula One.
Amon may have finished second at Spa the following year, but the inaugural victory he would’ve given his teeth for would evade him – just as Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni’s Ferraris were making inroads during the latter half of 1970.
Amon no doubt would be full of empathy for Fernando Alonso at the Malaysian and Hungarian Grand Prix’s this year. As Fernando schlepped his brittle McLaren into the points for the first time in 2015, he did so amidst the backdrop of Sebastian Vettel’s second victory for Alonso’s former team, Ferrari.
When Vettel announced his defection to Maranello, his former Red Bull teammate Mark Webber wryly suggested that it would be “just his luck to go to Ferrari when they have one of their golden periods”.
Juan Manuel Fangio also had a knack for sliding into a team as they were enjoying an upward trajectory. After winning his first World Championship with Alfa Romeo in 1951 he only had to wait two seasons before winning four consecutive titles with three different teams: Ferrari, Maserati and Mercedes.
At the time of Vettel’s sidestep, Fernando simply observed (presumably out of shock) “Sebastian obviously needs to find new motivation and a new chapter in his life”. The very reason Fernando was leaving the same team.
On the other side of the coin, former Ferrari engineer (and current head of vehicle performance at Williams) Rob Smedley was of no doubt that any team lucky enough to procure the services of Alonso would “be better off purely from the motivating force he can will bring with him”.
“I think by pure proxy of his talent he tends to motivate people,” Smedley explained. “When you’re at the absolute top of your game and nobody can come near you that’s just motivation in itself.
“If you excel at what you do – in whatever walk of life or role in Formula One – it forces everyone around you to raise their own game. That’s the motivation in working with Fernando.”
Many people in the Formula One paddock believe that Alonso and Ferrari were the quintessential Maranello marriage – much like Jim Clark was at Lotus and likewise Jackie Stewart at Tyrrell.
But one must factor in the magic of Maranello; the ‘wow factor’ a new Ferrari driver must experience when walking through that burgundy gateway for the first time. It is an analeptic contract where the large copy rewards and the fine print chastises in a way that only a sporting team on the same level as Manchester United can do.
Former Ferrari driver Gilles Villeneuve could relate:
“When you’re first there, and you see all the facilities and everything, you wonder how they can ever lose a race. Then, as time goes by, and you become more aware of the politics, you understand.”
While Alonso is a political animal, so is Vettel, albeit in a more encouraging way. Where Alonso demands perfection from his team, Vettel instead will joke, seduce and massage his troops in order to extract loyalty and excellence.
“Vettel brings something different to Ferrari and helps to motivate a group that, in terms of management, is completely new,” Alonso’s manager, Flavio Briatore, confided publicly to RAI.
Whether Vettel’s nurturing approach will stretch beyond the present honeymoon period he and Ferrari are enjoying remains to be seen, but it certainly helps that technical director James Allison has managed to fuse together a group of departments that only six months ago were in a state of discord.
Fernando’s last season at Ferrari wasn’t dissimilar to Ferrari’s annus horribilis of 1992. Despite being an absolute pig-dog of a car, chief designer Jean Claude Migeot at least attempted innovation in the form of his double floor design. Although the concept failed to achieve results, it was more than could be said of the largely conservative approach adopted by Ferrari during Alonso’s tenure – simply stiffening the car to cover deficiencies and let Alonso’s genius do the rest.
So was it simply Alonso’s uncompromising methods or the environment he found himself in that yielded zero world championships at Ferrari, despite finishing runner up on three occasions? Despite the current nadir at McLaren, Fernando is performing as a dutiful and supportive servant, but then there is no pressure of a championship fight either.
Perhaps the only true Alonso/Vettel comparison can be made during Vettel’s second term at Ferrari, and only then if the team has failed to build upon their handful of wins since the young German joined their ranks.
Or are we simply over-analysing? Niki Lauda’s customary blunt appraisal of the situation is that “Vettel is sunny, Alonso is dark”.
In the pantomime backdrop of Formula One, perception can unreasonably define such careers.
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