Aston Martin star Fernando Alonso thinks ‘no one will remember’ his greatest ever Formula 1 race

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Over the 417 Grand Prix starts of Fernando Alonso’s 22-year career in Formula 1, the Spanish driver has completed some stellar drives to cement himself as one of the best drivers in the history of the sport.

He’s stood on the podium in just over a quarter of all races that he has entered, and etched himself in the F1 history books to be the man to dethrone Michael Schumacher during his period of dominance at the beginning of the new millennium.

Things have quietened down for Alonso in recent years, with a short spell as a regular podium sitter to begin the 2023 season seeing Aston Martin fall back into the midfield as the year progressed.

2023 F1 champion Max Verstappen believes Alonso is the best racer on the F1 grid, noting his abilities in wheel-to-wheel combat and race intelligence as being a grade above the rest of his F1 rivals.

READ MORE: Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso’s life outside F1 from net worth to Cars 2

Fernando Alonso believes the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix was his ‘greatest’ drive in F1

Speaking to Jake Humphrey in a sit-down interview, Alonso was asked what he thinks is his ‘greatest’ ever drive in F1 so far. After pondering for a moment, the Aston Martin driver replied, “I think it was Malaysia, Sepang 2011, where I had a problem with the gear shift and the gearbox was semi-broken.”

The two-time world champion went on to explain how he dealt with an issue in his downshifts from around the halfway stage of the race until the chequered flag.

He managed to find a solution to the issue within a matter of corners, saying, “Out of desperation, I tried to bleep the throttle on a downshift just because if not I will retire the car on that lap.

“And I bleep the throttle, and the downshift went in. So in the next braking point, I bleep the throttle four times and four downshifts went down.”

After jumping on the team radio to ask if what he was doing wouldn’t affect the integrity of the gearbox, his Ferrari race engineer told him that it was completely fine to do so, if he was willing to.

“I did like 30 laps like that. The upshift was okay. And then braking, while having pressure on the brake pedal, I had to blip the throttle a couple of times to the downshift that I wanted.”

After the race had finished, the engineers at the Prancing Horse were amazed by his quick thinking, as Alonso describes, “The engineers came and they said I don’t know how you came up with that solution that fast.

“That could have been a solution, but you did it in, like, 13 or 14 seconds, in the second corner after you had the problem.”

READ MORE: Why Fernando Alonso’s 2001 debut campaign was the best point-less season in Formula 1 history

Fernando Alonso’s reasoning for the quick fix is down to the fact that he hates early retirements

In response to the awe of the Ferrari engineers, Alonso said, “I said I hate losing, I hate retiring the car, and I will try everything before just stopping and accepting that we have to DNF. 

“I finished like fifth or something completely anonymous that no one will remember, but the level of energy that I had to put in.

“The level of concentration and focus to instantly come up with a solution to a problem that was never tested or experienced. I think it was quite a race to remember.”

In the same interview with Humphrey, Alonso alluded to the mind games he had with Mark Webber at the Korean Grand Prix in the year prior.

The early 2010s were defined by Alonso’s determination to win a third world title while up against the dominance of Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel.

He may have a chance of replicating the success of the Austrian constructor from those years, due to Aston Martin’s signing of Red Bull’s chief aerodynamicist during the era, Adrian Newey.

Alonso has noted Newey as doing unprecedented things at Aston Martin since his addition to the team earlier in the year. The British engineer could be key to realising Alonso’s long-awaited ambition of becoming a three-time world champion.