Alonso attributes his F1 qualifying and racing superiority vis-a-vis Stoffel to IndyCar exploits

The 2019 F1 season will be a bit strange without one of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen: Fernando Alonso.

Alonso has been an enduring enigma of the sport, his talent and passion for motor-racing have lifted the level of competition, giving close rivals, Vettel, Hamilton, Raikkonen a run for their money.

The famous Spanish racing driver won two F1 titles, clinched 32 race wins, forged an intense albeit respectful rivalry with Michael Schumacher, emerged as the dark knight for Ferrari during their exhilarating rivalry with Red Bull, starting 2010-13 seasons, and dropped down to the back of the grid starting 2015, ever since he joined McLaren.

A move that was expected to have been a stalwart of motor-racing joining a great team, which is a legacy in Formula 1, quickly evaporated into thin air. All that remained of Alonso- a man who's as respected in the sport as he's hero-worshipped- were lukewarm performances that were anything but exhilarating.

Yet, in those low years at McLaren, Fernando Alonso managed to do something which probably most other veteran drivers, had they been driving a car like the tawdry McLaren might not have managed to do.

Among some interesting performances that shot Alonso to the attention of everyone including that flying P5 at the season-opener at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix. He was the guy who found a way to put his recalcitrant McLaren on a P6 at Hungaroring in 2017. In so doing, he also set the fastest lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix of 2017.

Earlier this year, at the beginning of the season, he was able to find a way to limp back into the pits of his McLaren after he ran over some debris sprinkled everywhere on the electrifying Baku track, the home of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. This was an effort that most commentators rated highly and felt was implicit in highlighting the persistence of the great man.

It was efforts such as these that help one understand just how talented is Fernando Alonso that, in the end, it didn't really seem it was that big a task for him to beat McLaren teammate Stoffel Vandoorne fair and square in the battle for qualifying and the races thereof.

But having said that, there's something in particular that enabled the man from Asturias to emerge on top of his Belgian teammate.

Here's what you need to know.

Alonso recently revealed that it was stints in motor-racing events such as IndyCar that enabled him to keep up with the challenge required to be on top of his qualifying and Grand Prix game in F1.

In the past 26 Grands Prix in Formula 1, there was never an occasion where Stoffel Vandoorne beat Fernando Alonso whether in qualifying or in the race.

A report on the aforementioned perspective published in Autosport.com quoted Alonso as saying:

"It's difficult to know exactly your speed in the car. You only can follow the numbers, and this year it has been my best year by far in terms of qualifying battles."