Alonso's 'ludicrous' F1 driving style explained

Whether he's got the best car (as he last had almost two decades ago) or the worst car (as he does now) in Formula 1, Fernando Alonso's driving always catches our eye.

At 44 years old, and with well over 400 F1 grand prix starts under his belt, Alonso is one of a kind in F1 folklore.

Never has there been an F1 driver who hasn't won for 13 years yet can still consistently stand out among the top performers on any given weekend.

But exactly what makes Alonso so special - and has kept him at the top of his game for so long - remains something of an enigma.

Two people well-placed to dissect Alonso's unique driving style are Mark Hughes and Edd Straw, who, between them, have followed Alonso's F1 career from his very first race with Minardi 25 years ago.

They were both present for his most recent victory, at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, and have witnessed his dogged mastery in the litany of midfield or even backmarker cars he's had to drive since, save for his 2023 season aboard a podium-worthy Aston Martin.

Alonso is the subject of the first episode of season three of Driving Style Secrets with Mark Hughes and Edd Straw.

That series will look at some of the key champions of the 21st century, from Sebastian Vettel to Kimi Raikkonen, to Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg.

You can watch episode one, on Alonso, for free on our YouTube channel, but to get access to the rest of the series (including episodes from seasons one and two, looking at the likes of Max Verstappen and Michael Schumacher) make sure you sign up to The Race Members' Club now.

To get more of a flavour, here's how they describe Alonso's driving style.

A 'ludicrous' driving style

"Watching trackside, somewhere like the Esses at the Circuit of The Americas, he's got the most amazing coordination between steering and throttle. He is sort of dancing between the two," Hughes explains.

"You see it at Monaco at Tabac, I've seen him do it there, where the car just didn't want to turn in, he was using the brakes in an extreme way. He can be quite brutal with the car, but only when it's needed.

"He'll get the nose down on this car that just didn't want to turn in, would be very, very reluctant to surrender any momentum and then we just sort of chuck it in and then just dance it through.

"It's the same lap after lap, and he is better at this improvisation, more than anyone I've ever seen. Just absolutely amazing on it."

Straw adds: "His driving style generally is ludicrous, really. It is so difficult to live on that edge the way he does. Just the fact that you can do that so consistently.

"You can see a driver who does that, but often falls off, and is a bit of a crasher. We've seen cases of that, but Alonso isn't that.

"The feel it requires, he feels very much through the front tyres and the steering. That's absolutely key to him, he said; if he hasn't got that feel, then he's basically dead, is what he says, that's sort of the one non-negotiable he's got in a car.

"It is a reactive style, but he's so quick in terms of interpreting that feedback that he actually becomes as proactive because he's responding to it the moment the start of that signal is there and normally, reactive drivers are a bad thing.

"But for him, he's closed that gap. So much, the sensitivity. If you could measure all the physiological things that go into that must be extraordinary."

'He can always find a way'

Alonso showed his star quality quickly in F1, spearheading Renault to back-to-back drivers' championships in the mid-2000s, but his adaptability only became apparent later.

"He's got so used to driving like that, it's incredibly attuned to those little cues that let them know that he's about to get this happening. And although he says he needs a front end when he doesn't have it, he still can find a way of getting the feel from it," Hughes says.

"With those rearward-bias Renaults that really had fantastic traction coming out of the turn, but generally had understeer, he would just lean into the understeer to a ludicrous extent and just whack the steering on so that he could get that data point immediately to get it over as quickly as possible, and then just lean into that understeer.

"Because they were his first years in Formula 1, people thought this was some unique driving style and that was how he drove the car.

"As soon as he got into other cars you thought, 'Oh no, it's not, he can drive all sort of different ways'. That was just the best way to drive that particular car. I recall Giancarlo Fisichella, his team-mate [at Renault in 2005-06], just being absolutely stunned by how he could drive it like that, he said, 'This car doesn't have a front end'.

"He can always find a way, that's the thing with Alonso."

Watch episode 1 in full below.

And make sure you're able to watch future episodes on Raikkonen, Button, Rosberg and Vettel, by signing up to The Race Members' Club now.