Ron Dennis, Fernando Alonso, McLaren, 2007

How Alonso wielded a peach in his bitter battle with Ron Dennis

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In the round-up: A telling anecdote about the breakdown in relations between Fernando Alonso and McLaren 13 years ago.

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More appreciation for the standard of competition in IndyCar’s iRacing Challenge:

Speaking as a non gamer, I was quite impressed by this effort as it looked quite realistic most of the time. Camera shots were good and the detail sharp. Compared to the F1 races, it looked much more believable and the presentation as a whole was pretty good and easy to get on YouTube. I’d watch another.
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On this day in F1

  • 45 years ago today Jochen Mass won the Spanish Grand Prix after it was shortened after a crash killed five spectators. F1 never visited Montjuic Park again.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “How Alonso wielded a peach in his bitter battle with Ron Dennis”

  1. Matt Bishop’s telling of the peachie Alonso story was ripe with delicious deviousness.

    1. @jimmi-cynic Great anecdote about Hamilton as well. Worth a listen.

    2. Maybe Fernando should have been impeached. I’ll get my coat.

  2. Well that was one of the strangest headlines I’ve read. I wondered if “wielding a peach” was a colloquilism I was unfamiliar with, but no, legitimately wielded a peach. And eating a peach with a knife and fork sounds utterly bizarre…

    1. ‘wielding a peach’ is a little-used proverb meaning as much as ‘furtively upsetting your boss’.

      1. @coldfly love it, you got a chuckle!

  3. Only Alonso could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him… I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my driver’s peach.

  4. Boy it must have been fun working at McLaren under Ron’s regime…

  5. Hopefully Vettel will never join and keep representing those of us who dislike (anti-)social media.

    1. Indeed, I was going to say the same thing. There is no need to be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc, you just don’t learn anything useful there. The excuse about staying in touch with friends in different countries is rubbish too, I’ve lived in several countries now and have friends in all of them and stay in touch perfectly well just using email and having their phone numbers.

      Viva la revolucion! :)

      1. @paulk,
        I don’t use social media and I am perfectly fine with it. I myself – just like @geemac – worked in many countries and have friends in different geographical locations that I stay in touch just using phone numbers.
        Nice to know that I am not the only one in the anti-social media brigade !

  6. Why should he join? It’s his right and decision if he never wants to join social media.

  7. The Alonso headline surprised me as well. I thought it was going to refer to a peach of an argument in a conversation or discussion. Not an actual peach as in a piece of fruit. How devious of him.

  8. The headline made me wonder too; LOL at that story, it’s so very Alonso, clever,subtle, but maybe not quite the smart thing to do in hindsight.

    1. Yes, too clever by half, is another saying that comes to mind.

  9. Alonso might well be an “operator” but he’s clearly not a very good one.

  10. letting all the juice run down into his beard

    Did Alonso have a beard at any time in 2007?
    Or was he ‘wielding the peach’ after his return to the team?

    1. Wondered that too – as far as I can see Alonso was mostly clean shaven (probably in his contract? also, I think most pics. I found are from earlier in the year) in public, but who knows, maybe part of wielding the peach was also that he let some stubble grow, got to eating that peach, and only after washed and shaved @coldfly?

      1. I thought beards were Ron’s #1 pet hate. It may have just been that day in Hungary for the “what he said” response in the “meet the team”. Was it the day after that Alonso tried to blackmail Ron, which led Ron to approach the FIA over the Ferrari data? My pet hate is how every scandal has the same suffix.

  11. John Richards (@legardforpresident)
    27th April 2020, 16:03

    Bishop’s commentary was fascinating. Kudos to him chap for highlighting how he was ‘the only gay in the village’ back in Formula 1. Pretty brave in a “man’s sport”. He also highlights how some closeted mechanics have revealed that they’re afraid to come out. Not something you hear in Formula 1 as such.

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