There is no doubt that Fernando Alonso is one of the best drivers on the grid and that he is much better than his teammate, even though some people involved in F1 are determined to discredit the driver from Oviedo. Opinions are debatable, but statistics cannot be disputed, and that is where the true potential of the Asturian driver lies.
Fernando Alonso, better in qualifying
F1 has released a graph showing the actual qualifying pace adjusted to the estimated performance of the team, and as expected, most teams have their two drivers occupying similar positions in the standings, except for two teams, Red Bull and Aston Martin. In this graph, Fernando Alonso is sixth in qualifying pace, while his teammate Lance Stroll is second to last on the grid. It is not the biggest gap, because first place is held by Max Verstappen, and second to last place is held by Yuki Tsunoda.
This graph shows that the performance of Fernando Alonso, like that of Verstappen, is infinitely superior in qualifying to that of his teammate and that both are capable of taking their cars much higher than they should be.
A difference that is not seen in the standings
But for the moment, we must not take anything away from Lance Stroll, because for whatever reason, he is currently level on points with Fernando Alonso in the overall standings, although the Oviedo-born driver is ahead thanks to his better race result between the two. This is because the Oviedo-born driver had a disastrous start to the season, where he came close to equaling the worst start of his career, avoiding it by just one point. Meanwhile, Lance Stroll took advantage of incidents during the race to score important points when the car was not in a position to do so. Call it luck, opportunism, whatever you want, but there he was, scoring important points throughout the season that are worth exactly the same as those of the Spanish driver.
But it is also true that only Fernando Alonso has been able to take advantage of the team’s improvements, adding points race after race to equal his teammate, without being able to benefit from race incidents as has happened on the other side of the garage, something that Fernando Alonso denounced at Silverstone when Stroll unexpectedly finished third.
Alonso continues to demonstrate his superiority
Fernando Alonso continues to compete like he did on his first day at the age of 44, and continues to break records in his favor. A few days ago, we talked about his superiority over each and every one of his teammates in F1, beating them all in head-to-head competition. This season, he has achieved incredible results with the AMR25, which was the worst car on the grid at the beginning of the year, and has managed to finish in the top ten despite having a slower pace than his rivals.
Fernando Alonso remains enthusiastic, motivated, and giving his all every weekend because he knows he still has a chance, he still has one last shot at his third F1 title, a prize he has long deserved but which has eluded him for more than 20 years. Next season could be the year, it could be his last shot at becoming world champion again.