Alonso may do more than Le Mans with Toyota

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso is being tipped to do more than just next year’s Le Mans 24 Hours for Toyota following his test for them yesterday.

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Keith Collantine
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11 comments on “Alonso may do more than Le Mans with Toyota”

  1. @philipgb – superb caption!

  2. I can’t help but feel that doing a few WEC races in addition to F1 might compromise the latter slightly. If McLaren are indeed at, or close to, the front of the grid next season, I would have thought Alonso would want to do a Rosberg (as in maximum commitment for 1 season) as it may be his final chance. Or, the more likely, Alonso knows McLaren won’t be competitive enough for victories next season and will thus use WEC to keep his motivation levels up. Just speculation of course.

    1. McLaren wont be competing at Rosberg scenario level any time soon. If they get 1 win, that will be a massive success.

      They would need to find some kind of serius rule loophole to exploit. The likes we have not seen since Brawn DD…

  3. Honda showing they’re still existing in an alternate reality. They matched a turned-down-for-reliability set of Renault PUs, and a Williams way out of its happy operating window and a tired Merc PU.

    Hopefully they come good next season; with the crazy 3 PU components rule it’ll be reliability that’s rewarded.

  4. He may also do more races in next year’s WEC, as long as his McLaren Formula One commitments are not compromised.

    Maybe there’d be more happiness if Alonso was allowed to race in F1 as long as it didn’t compromise his WEC racing.

  5. A three years approach of decency is the most cautious approach I’ve ever seen! I hope it’s in sight for the sake of Torro Rosso.

  6. In 1987 Honda was one of the leading manufacturers. Although crazy numbers are often quoted for the output of the turbo engines, let’s assume they realistically had about 800 hp to play with.
    The privateer Tyrrell team used naturally aspirated Cosworth engines that season, I assume capable of somewhere between 550 and 600 hp. So Tyrrell had at least an 200 hp deficit to the turbo teams.
    The Tyrrell drivers qualified (on broad average) just outside the top 10, on 105-109% of the pole. Still, in the races they managed regular points finishes and as you remember, points were given to the top 6 only. They ended up 6th (out of 16) in standings with 11 pts.

    I read last week that mr. Mark Hughes says the concensus in the paddock is that Ferrari are about 10 hp behind Mercedes, Renault 25 hp and Honda 40 hp.
    This year the “superslow” Saubers were never anywhere near the 107% qualifying limit, they were always comfortably inside it. This years 6th placed team (out of 10) Toro Rosso has only 4 pts according to the 1987 points system.

    Maybe we should stop complaining about the engines and how unequal they are. It’s not like fighting turbo’s with atmo’s, it’s not like 90 hp Gordini’s vs 300 hp Alfa Romeo’s. They are actually very, very close.

    -Maybe we should consider that the monotone race results have different causes.
    -Maybe we should look the teams computing power, their predictive techniques.
    -Maybe we should remember as far back as 2012 how an interesting tyre construction can cause interesting races.
    -I would ad a remark about reliability, but considering the conspiracy theories that surfaced after Hamiltons single engine failure in Sepang ’16, I’m afraid the current generation of F1 viewers might not be able to handle limited reliability of cars.
    -Maybe we should call it how it is: the aero and tyre regulations changes of 2017 are a failure.
    -Maybe we should consider that if we keep asking for faster and louder, we don’t actually get something better.
    -Maybe we shouldn’t standardise engine(part)s, but wing profiles instead.
    -Maybe, just maybe, the actual racing is more important than our favourite driver/team winning.

    1. Agree.
      Standardazing wings and most or all of the aerodynamics, which eat hundreds of millions yearly without bringing anything road relevant, and investing resources in technologies that may later be used in actual roads. Better, closer racing, making a better, closer championship.

      Why is it not possible to invest 1 billion on mechanical parts that might actually be used in the future, instead of on a few mm or cm of bodywork parts which will be ditched probably by the end of the current/next championship/season?

      1. There are way too many jobs involved in providing new aero parts now. It should have been nipped in the bud in the early days. F1 is incredibly up its own bottom.

    2. COTY!

      Or at least quote of the month. Spot on @Leo B

  7. Another reason Fernando will be happy to see the back of Honda. No way would they have let him go off and generate headlines with one of their biggest rivals…

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