The key was a name: Oscar Piastri.
Piastri is 21 years old and is presumed to have a magnificent future in F-1. Between 2019 and 2021 he has won everything he has contested, including the F-2 world title. And he comes from the Alpine Academy.
Piastri is Australian and is growing, and the Alpine team is already looking for a place for him in 2023.
What happens is that, for one to enter, another must leave.
In Alpine they drive Esteban Ocon (25) and Fernando Alonso (41). The first is French and appears eighth overall in the World Cup (58 points). Alonso is tenth (41) and is (or was) in the process of being renewed with Alpine.
The negotiation was becoming a ball for Alonso: Alpine was only offering him one more year and a smaller role in the team, more along the lines of test driver, perhaps making way for Piastri.
In public, Alonso said:
–If both parties agree, we can fix it in ten minutes.
The reality is that that was a Laportian message.
(Laporta is the president who intended to resolve Messi's renewal "around a barbecue").
And as in the Messi case, this was not going to be a formality either.
And aware of this, behind the scenes, Alonso was moving chips: Aston Martin knocked on the door.
Aston Martin is not a leading team (right now it is ninth among the ten teams on the grid), but it had an urgency, the need to replace one renowned driver with another: Sebastian Vettel (35) was retiring.
Vettel has won four consecutive World Cups (from 2010 to 2013) and yet now he was barely surviving in F-1, 14th overall with 16 points, nothing to do with the hundreds he accumulated in his splendid courses at Red Bull. And at the end of 2022, he was going to say enough.
Alonso plays in Vettel's league. His two world titles in 2005 and 2006 (with the old Renault; today Renault is Alpine) give him pedigree, depth and renown, just what Aston Martin was looking for.
In fact, the proposal was a win-win, as the British team offered him a "multi-year" contract and guaranteed him a place on the grid alongside Lance Stroll, the other Aston Martin driver and son of the owner, Lawrence Stroll.
Fitting room?
Of that, nothing.
So, like cats, Alonso landed on his feet.
“We want to finish the rest of the 2022 season well with Fernando (Alonso) dressed in blue and we are going to give it our all together until the last lap in November. The team will announce its pair of drivers for next year soon”, Alpine tweeted yesterday, whose dilemma is resolved: it will have an open bar to promote Oscar Piastri.
"The hiring of a talent like Alonso is a clear warning of the intentions of our team -said, for its part, Aston Martin-: we are determined to develop an F-1 team that is a winner".
And Alonzo?
Years go by and there it continues, like Augusto Monterroso's dinosaur.
With this there are eight jumps in F-1, eight jumps since his debut 21 years ago (next will be his 20th season, after his breaks in 2019 and 2020), a record of longevity and success that has made him a model for the youngest and also for the oldest, those who wonder where the physical limits of the human being are.
“I still have the hunger and ambition to fight to be in the lead. And I want to be part of an organization committed to learning, growing and succeeding”, said Alonso yesterday.
