Fernando Alonso doesn’t think he has been an unlucky driver on the whole, even though he has had phases in F1 where he has claimed to be one.
The ‘unluckiest driver’ tag came upon from Aston Martin’s Alonso in Imola when he had a good qualifying but couldn’t eventually convert it into points. It extended in Monaco as well when a certain points finish resulted in a retirement due to a mechanical issue.
He was finally rewarded in Barcelona when he managed to score handy points to open his account in 2025 F1 season. But Alonso doesn’t feel as an unlucky driver. The Spaniard explained the radio call from Imola as an internal discussion which he has with his set of engineers.
He noted that many listening half of it on radio will not understand the reasoning behind it but it doesn’t mean he is unlucky as a whole in his racing career. The unluckiest part this year is uncompetitiveness as per him. As a racing career, considering he was won titles, he thinks luck has played a role in it.
“I don’t believe in all those things (lucky charm/mascot),” said Alonso to media. “So it’s what we deserve, probably. We’ve been unlucky many moments, I think this year we’ve been uncompetitive – which is the unluckiest part of everything. When you are more competitive, any strategy works, any safety car is a small problem, but it’s not the end of the day – but when you are not competitive, anything that is not in your way it takes you out of the points.
“But in seven races that we had the possibility to score points, many things happened. We went off in the gravel – my mistake – in Australia; then in China, with three disqualified cars, we could score points, but we had fire on the brakes already in lap two, and we had to retire the car; and we’ve been uncompetitive for many races.
“One race that we are competitive [at Imola], and we will be in the points for merit for the very first time, there is this first Safety Car. In the first six races, when we were P12, nothing happened for 60 laps, and we finished P12. So, these kinds of things are always frustrating in the car, but as I said, this is a very private conversation with my engineer and my team; we do the debriefs, we say how uncompetitive we are, we say how competitive we certainly are in Imola, and we could score points, we spend the whole Sunday on the strategy, looking for these first points.
“You send a message specifically to them, and a very private conversation. When you don’t know the context of everything, and you just put the radio, it makes no sense, but this is the normal rule for Formula 1. But I don’t consider myself unlucky. I mean, two times world champion, two times Le Mans winner, WEC champion, 24-hour Daytona champion – so if I’m unlucky, I cannot imagine the other 18 drivers here,” summed up Alonso.
Here’s Fernando Alonso on points
