Fernando Alonso: Aston Martin driver says he 'lives and breathes' Formula 1

Fernando Alonso’s passion for Formula 1 shone like a blinding light as he announced his decision to race on with Aston Martin until at least the end of 2026.

The Spanish two-time world champion will be 43 in July, and his new contract will mean he will be racing in F1 until at least the age of 45.

Alonso is rewriting the sport’s rule book, and the remarkable thing about it is that he does not even seem to consider it extraordinary.

“I felt I love too much driving that I cannot stop at the moment,” said Alonso. “The sacrifices you have to make are smaller than the passion I have for driving.

“I breathe F1, I live for F1, I train to be fit to drive F1, I eat to be fit to drive F1. It didn’t arrive the moment I felt the need to change lifestyle. I love what I do. I will not be happy sitting at home watching F1 because at the moment I still feel I should be there.”

On the performance front, there can be little doubt about that.

Alonso was one of the outstanding performers of last season, as Aston Martin made a remarkable leap from the middle of the pack to the front at the start of the year.

Six podiums in the first eight races followed, including some outstanding drives. And although the team’s performance level dropped in the second part of the season, Alonso’s did not.

His drive to third in Brazil at the end of the season, holding off Sergio Perez’s Red Bull for 16 laps and then re-passing it on the final lap after the Mexican had finally got by, was a masterpiece.

Alonso has made great play so far this season of saying he wanted to spend some time working out whether he wanted to carry on racing before deciding where to do that if the answer was yes.

It has not taken that long. Retirement, he added, “never went to my mind”.

Alonso said he decided after the third race of the season in Australia that he wanted to keep going. After that, staying with Aston Martin was the “natural decision and the logical thing to do”.

Aston Martin had offered him a new contract even before they had arrived in Melbourne. It did what Alonso wanted – offered him a long-term commitment, with a tidy salary, that underlined their commitment to him as a driver.

After a season like Alonso had in 2023, when he was arguably the second most impressive driver of the year after world champion Max Verstappen, they did not need any more convincing.

And it provided Alonso the backing he had not felt at Alpine, a management failure which led to his decision to leave the French team and join Aston in the first place back in the summer of 2022.