The Alonso-Ferrari failure: Who was at fault, exactly?

Fernando Alonso had quite an unhappy time at Ferrari

So the worst kept secret in is finally out now: two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso will be leaving Scuderia Ferrari at the end of 2014 season with Sebastian Vettel, the four-time World Champion, replacing him in the team.This means that after five years of toiling away in Scarlet colours Alonso has finally given up on the dream of becoming a World Champion with Ferrari (something he repeatedly said he wanted to do).

Perennially second best, in the shadow of Vettel

Switch back to 2009, when Alonso was signed to replace Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari's last world champion), little did anyone know that the marriage that would last for as many as five years would end up without a title. Here are Alonso's stats during this period (before the Brazilian GP):

Pole Positions: 4

Race wins: 11

Points: 1029

The numbers seem impressive but when you put it into perspective with a certain Sebastien Vettel, they pale in comparison. Vettel during the same period has

Pole Positions: 44

Race wins: 38

Points: 1410

It is the second set of stats that ultimately led to Alonso's frustration boiling over to such an extent that despite not even securing a drive (even though a switch to Mclaren seems like a done deal), he has severed his ties with Ferrari.

When Alonso had joined Ferrari back in 2009, it had seemed like a match made in heaven. Ferrari, the most successful team in the history of F1, joining hands with the most successful driver on the grid at that time, made for screaming headlines. Add to that the fact that Alonso was a person who could play the political card very well, and was known to get his hands dirty if that is what was needed to be done, and it seemed like nothing could go wrong.

Alonso was expected to be a perfect fit for Ferrari, and predictions of multiple championships were made when the relationship became official. Things started well for them too, with a race win in his very first race and the championship battle going down to the wire with the Spaniard losing out in the end despite coming into the race as a clear favourite.

Even then, it all seemed like a good start to a partnership because Alonso had the most number of race wins (along with Vettel) in the season; improvements in some areas for the team seemed likely to bring Ferrari and Alonso the title they were looking for.

But sadly, none of that happened as every subsequent year, slower cars were dished out from Maranello which lacked downforce and were found wanting when compared to Red Bull during the length of a season.

Were Ferrari at fault?

One needs to go back to the final race of the 2012 season to pretty much symbolise Alonso's 5 years at Ferrari. There he was standing in the parc ferme next to the platypus-nosed Ferrari, a donkey of a car which he had dragged all year, putting it in places which it never deserved to be. And in the end, after all this, Vettel was the one who won his third consecutive title and Alonso had to leave empty-handed again.

Year after year, race after race, Alonso was proving himself to be one of the best if not the best driver on the grid. Never letting up, never giving an inch, never faltering at any stage; but the problem was that even though he got the accolades, he never got the silverware. Race in and race out it was Vettel who was winning races and titles while Alonso was left to pick up the remaining crumbs.

Three times in the last four years Alonso came second best to Vettel in the standings. For a driver with tremendous hunger like what Alonso possesses, that was never going to go down well. And ultimately, that is exactly what transpired.

Ferrari themselves haven't looked anything other than a pale shadow of themselves during this period. They seem to have lost the clout that they had when Michael Schumacher was part of the team. They don't seem to command as much respect on the grid as they used to earlier.

For instance, it was Ferrari's clout and their stature (and the backroom politics) that helped ban the Michelin tyres in 2003, which was one of the prime reasons why Schumacher won the title that year. Come to think of it, in 2013 with a similar scenario opening up with the fragile Pirellis, a change to the older compounds could have brought about Ferrari’s downfall as they had a car which was kinder on its tyres. The move ultimately took away their advantage and pretty much ended their title challenge.

The same could be said about Ferrari's inefficiency in getting a fully functioning and correctly calibrated wind tunnel up and running. For many years this was what hindered Ferrari's progress as the data from the windtunnel and the track frequently failed to match.

With all that in the past now, Ferrari have come up with a V6 turbo engine which is just no competition to the Mercedes power unit. It falls short in the aspects of power, driveability as well as fuel consumption, making it so inferior that it has been shown up horribly all season. In a way, during Alonso’s stay at Ferrari, the team has gone from being title contenders in all bar one season in the previous decade to a midfield team which occasionally fights for podium, which is an increasingly unsuitable place to be for a driver if he wants to win the world title.

Was it Alonso?

Okay, let's go back to the last line of the previous paragraph: "during Alonso’s stay at Ferrari, the team has gone from being title contenders to a midfield team which occasionally fights for podiums". When you're a part of the team that has faced such a decline entirely during your tenure, then some way or the other you're bound to have contributed to the fall. If Ferrari during Alonso's tenure has dismantled so comprehensively then Alonso can't just shrug it off and say that he had nothing to with it.

When you're the team's lead driver, especially at Ferrari where you are given so many privileges and handed a bit of a free rein to do what you want to, you can’t claim complete immunity. Questions are bound to be asked of "Alonso The Leader". Could he have done something different? He was rumoured to be responsible for Aldo Costa's departure (ironically one of the guys behind Mercedes' success in 2014) from Ferrari. Was that a knee jerk reaction?

In hindsight, it does look like one. Then why wasn't James Allison, someone who Alonso has even worked with before, brought onboard earlier? (Schumacher did something similar when he joined Ferrari as he brought in a plethora of people with him, most notably Ross Brawn).

There were many instances when Alonso could have demanded more from Ferrari; he could've pushed for bringing in new personnel (something that Merc did pretty admirably and are reaping rewards now). When so many good personnel were in the market Ferrari still didn't go for them and stuck to an underperforming bunch. And Alonso being part of the team apparently never raised a voice and was probably okay with how things were at Maranello.

A bitter end to a match that had so much promise

In the end, it's probably fair to say that the Alonso-Ferrari marriage failed primarily because of a disfunctioning unit run by the Ferrari Head of Affairs (Stefano Domenicali). They currently find themselves in a big big hole from which even the team admits it will be a tough ask to climb out.

On the other hand though, Alonso can't just leave away disgruntled as although the cars produced in Maranello were not up to the mark, he was treated like a king during his stint in Ferrari to such an extent that there were even instances where his teammate was rendered to a role of a test driver, picking up the data on race weekends primarily for Alonso.

It's a marriage that failed because the duo was not proactive enough and perhaps because the others did a better job collectively. Ferrari on their part never gave Alonso the car with which he could win the title (apart from 2010) and Alonso on his end couldn’t do what Schumacher did for Ferrari, that is, bring in personnel that made the difference.