A new car and engine partnership with Honda that struggles for reliability and performance and has Alonso as one of the drivers. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is.
In 2015, Alonso joined McLaren from Ferrari wooed by the promise of Honda’s potential. That potential was eventually realised – but not until 2020-21, by which time Honda and McLaren had long since split and Honda had joined forces with Red Bull.
Alonso’s career, meanwhile, became a kind of living purgatory. One of the greatest drivers the sport has ever known reduced to fighting for scraps, making up his own targets for motivation, rather than what he should have been gunning for – wins and titles in F1.
He last won a race in May 2013, and he is now 44. But his performances have continued on a high level, and the respect he has from his peers on the grid is higher than ever. For his talent, and his ability to keep up his motivation in the face of everything.
The Newey-Honda-Aston Martin combination on paper promised Alonso something positive, a last hope of a return to success with which to bring his storied career to a close. Either this year, when his current contract runs out, or perhaps after one more, if glory seemed tangible.
Instead, he has found himself transported back in time 10 years.
Alonso has waited an entire career to work with Newey, the excellence of whose cars – and some terrible luck – have denied the Spaniard at least two further world titles that he should have won.
Alonso won’t doubt Newey can sort this out. Who would? But after his experiences with Honda last time, can he really convince himself it can turn this around in the limited time he surely still has available?
In public, Alonso is staying optimistic, just as he did with McLaren and Honda, bar one or two public slips when it all got too much.
“Everything can be fixed, for sure,” he says. “Short and medium term. I don’t think there is anything that is impossible to fix.
“We will try to fix everything we can before Australia and after that we try to fix as many things as possible in the first couple of races. Because [otherwise] it’s too late in the championship. But no, I’m optimistic. I think there is a solution in place.”
Alonso’s partner Melissa Jimenez is expecting their first child in late March.
The emergence of the unfolding catastrophe that is Aston Martin-Honda is so recent he has not yet been asked about his thoughts on his future. But he will already be considering what to do.
Does he roll the dice one last time, try to summon the energy and commitment to go again after what will doubtless be a very trying year? Or call it quits?
