Why is Fernando Alonso moving to Aston Martin?

Fernando Alonso is one of the greatest drivers F1 has ever seen. No need to give you reasons or evidence for this, you know he is already. So after a few years back with his original championship winning team (under a new name: Alpine) why would he all of a sudden change to Aston Martin? Going from a semi decent mid field team, to a much less competitive team just for the pay day. Or maybe just to spite the Alpine bosses not giving him a longer contract? That doesn’t seem to make total sense on the surface… but it seems that there is method to the madness.

Aston Martin F1 team with the help of the Stroll fortune have recently been injected with a lot of investment. The team will open its new state of the art factory head quarters at Silverstone in 2023 and it already looks impressive. The facility is said to cost 300 million dollars and will be one of the best equipped and most up to date out of all the current teams on the grid. It will even have a new wind tunnel and we all know how important they are. No wonder it’s described as a “game-changer” for Aston Martin.

Then there is the new employees. Aston Martin have been said to be very aggressive with obtaining all kinds of engineering and managerial talent. For example, bringing former McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh in could be a sign of things to come. Just don’t bring up his infamous Matrix management system.

Now bringing in the talent of Alonso, the pace of the car with Vettel in the last few races, no big rule changes for next year and then (due to 2022 results) the cherry on top, having more wind tunnel time then most ahead of them. This all comes together to position them as a formidable package for the 2023 season.

After all this, it really doesn’t look like such a bad decision from Alonso, it’s just down to execution now. Here’s hoping we have a newly fired up and ready to attack team for next years championship. Let’s just say I will definitely be getting that second mortgage on my house to be able to afford some Alonso British racing Green merchandise for 2023.

Alonso can do no wrong - TB