So Alonso stays – but why did he keep us waiting?

Hi there,

Oleg Karpov here with the first edition of my new newsletter, just ahead of this week’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

It will be the first Formula 1 race at Sepang for more than half the drivers on the grid – but certainly not for one driver whose contract extension has just been announced…

So, he stays. Was it a surprise? Not quite. After all, Fernando Alonso’s only real purpose in life is to race. He doesn’t know anything else.

But he still made us wait - even though it looks as if he either made up his mind about his future at least a couple of months ago or simply never had any doubts about it in the first place. The only real reason for the delay was that he wanted to make sure he was heard.

It’s no secret that Formula 1 drivers are not in love with the current Formula 1 cars. Those like Alonso have made it perfectly clear they don’t really like it when computers decide things for them - and with the complex PUs of F1 2026, there’s quite a bit of that going on.

Alonso is one of a few drivers who never stopped talking about it - despite F1’s push to keep that discussion out of the public eye. That also makes sense: when a sport’s most prominent characters drag that sport through the mud in the media, it’s not necessarily healthy. It would perhaps have been better to hold these discussions behind closed doors.

They’ve been naughty, slagging F1 off in the media - perhaps not always thinking too much about how their comments might come across. Or maybe they did it because they felt that, behind those closed doors, people weren’t willing to listen - so they turned to the media to make themselves louder.

Alonso’s behaviour hints at exactly that. And funnily enough, he has used the same tactic as Max Verstappen, who threatened to quit F1 altogether because F1 wasn’t the F1 he enjoyed anymore.

Verstappen and Alonso have both been very consistent in their criticism of the direction the series has chosen with the recent ruleset, and both have used the media to demand changes. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that the drivers played a major part in F1 making changes for 2027 and 2028 - but it’s clear those aren’t enough to satisfy most of them.

What Alonso did was make sure he had another few weeks to keep the discussion going - clearly understanding that the uncertainty surrounding his future gave him the hook to deliver more and more of his views to the public.

Last Wednesday in Baku, on media day, he probably already knew it would be his last opportunity to explain why he still hadn’t committed to staying. And when our own Ronald Vording offered him another opportunity with the first question, Alonso kept talking for three and a half minutes of the ten allocated in his schedule - despite not really saying anything new.

“I’m very active between the races,” he said. “And every single car that I drive, it feels natural for me to go fast. You brake later, you go throttle earlier, you take more risks - and you learn in the process, it's educating. Every lap, you go faster and faster because you know the car better and you know the limits better and better. It's pure instinct of driving. With the current regulations, it's not happening like that. You just need to think a lot before you drive. Because everything is programmed and set by the regs and by the engineering and the simulations and things like that. So, there is a lot less fun to drive these cars.”

He said driving through Eau Rouge in his 2026 F1 car was “semi-embarrassing”. He said F1 had “killed” some of its best tracks this year.

But by then, for most journalists in the room, it was more or less clear he was still going to keep racing in F1 in 2027. It was just a matter of giving himself a few more of these sessions to deliver the message he perhaps feels is still not entirely understood by those making the decisions.

It’s well known that he spoke to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem about the need to make further changes to the rules. He spoke to F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali too - behind closed doors. But he still made sure the press kept asking and the audience kept listening while he was yet to confirm whether he had decided to stay or not.

He stays, after all.

So F1, despite all the outcry, has kept both Verstappen and Alonso. And it’s probably a good outcome. This sport was built on characters - and it would have been a much worse place without the two.

That doesn’t mean they have surrendered in their fight for what they believe is a better future for the series, though. They just wanted to make their point clear. And it would be stupid for F1 to ignore it.

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Let me know what you think.

Best,

Oleg

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