Fernando
Alonso

Fernando Alonso was born on 29 July 1981 in Oviedo, Asturias. His father, an amateur kart racer himself, built a kart that Alonso ended up receiving, and he won his first kart race aged seven. He took the CIK-FIA Five Continents Cup in 1996, won the Euro Open by Nissan in 1999 and finished fourth in International Formula 3000 in 2000.

He made his Formula One debut with Minardi in 2001 without scoring a point. After a year as a Renault test driver he won a race seat there for 2003, took pole position in Malaysia and won his first race in Hungary, each time as the youngest driver up to that point. In 2005 he won seven races and became Spain's first world champion, at that time the youngest in history. In 2006 he defended the title against Michael Schumacher, securing it with second place in the final round in Brazil.

He moved to McLaren in 2007, winning four races and finishing third in the championship, one point behind champion Kimi Räikkönen and level on points with team-mate Lewis Hamilton. He then went back to Renault, where he won in Singapore and Japan in 2008. At Ferrari from 2010 to 2014 he was runner-up three times: four points behind Sebastian Vettel in 2010, three points behind him in 2012 and second again in 2013.

He returned to McLaren in 2015 with Honda engines, stayed until the end of 2018 and then left Formula One. Away from F1, he won the 2018-19 World Endurance Championship with Toyota alongside Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, together with the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2018 and 2019, and he also won the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona. At the Indianapolis 500 in 2017 he led 27 laps as a rookie before his engine failed and he was classified 24th; he missed qualifying in 2019 and finished 21st in 2020.

He returned to Formula One with Alpine in 2021 and finished third in Qatar, his first podium since 2014. Since 2023 he has driven for Aston Martin: he was third on his debut for the team in Bahrain and reached his 100th podium in Saudi Arabia that year.

Source: Wikipedia, “Fernando Alonso”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.