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Tuesday, August 14, 2018, will go down as a very sad day in the Formula 1 community when Fernando Alonso announced his retirement from the racing series.
2001 welcomed an unknown face to the grid, a young and inexperienced racer sitting behind the wheel of a Minardi in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix.
The early 2000s saw a repeated Michael Schumacher show who just kept rolling in the driver's championships.
A period when F1 thought it embraced the greatest driver of all time.
A young Alonso could only watch on and race within the shadows of a German great.
For five years Schumacher and Ferrari would run a rampage of race wins and championship victories.
A percentage of the F1 community wanted something different ahead of the 2005 championship.
They got their wish.
A decorated blue and yellow Renault was unveiled as Alonso was teamed up with Giancarlo Fisichella, an Italian who would take up the challenge of stopping his beloved home team.
The Renault R25 was a thing of beauty but the expectation from the outsiders was to finish below the red Ferraris of Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello.
The 2005 Australian Grand Prix, four years after Alonso's debut race in a Minardi - how times have changed for the better for the Spaniard.
Fisichella started off the Renault train by winning the opening race in Melbourne followed by three consecutive wins from Alonso in Malaysia, Bahrain and San Marino.
Schumacher and Ferrari were nowhere to be seen at the front.
A young Kimi Raikkonen and the McLaren force were on Alonso's tail by winning seven out of the 19 races.
Ferrari were not used to being thrown back as Schumacher could only seal one race win in 2005.
Alonso's six wins in the championship were enough to secure his first ever world championship.
At the start of a season where many believed the R25 was not good enough to claim championship titles, Alonso cemented himself as a world champion and had many eyes switching to the Spaniard.
Winning an F1 world championship on more than one occasion is a bigger and more respectable achievement.
The pressure was on Alonso to climb to the very top once more.
A famous overtake on Schumacher in the first race in Bahrain just showed the pure racing skills Alonso has up his sleeve.
Not many dared to challenge Schumacher before Alonso.
2006 will go down as a championship that was truly between the Spaniard and the German.
The battle had to be decided in the final race in Sao Paolo for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Seven Alonso wins and a matching number from a revived Schumacher displayed an epic rivalry.
The race took place weeks after the seven time world champion announced his first retirement from the sport.
Going out on a high was on the cards or a championship to be retained into Renault's hands.
Schumacher's team mate, Felipe Massa, achieved the dream of winning on home turf but unfortunately for Ferrari it would be the only moment they would celebrate that day.
Alonso crossed the finish line and did what he had to do to become a multiple Formula 1 world champion.
The emotional team radio of the new two time world champion addressing his group his final wishes before making that dream move to McLaren for the following season.
No one would have thought 2005 and 2006 would be his only championship wins...
It could have been so much more for Alonso
Alonso's CV also includes racing for McLaren and Ferrari - two of the biggest teams in Formula 1 today and in the history of the sport.
Those two world championship victories set Alonso up for a very bright future in F1.
In 2007, Alonso teamed up with a rookie Lewis Hamilton at McLaren.
Both Alonso and Hamilton contended for the world championship and so did Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.
There were problems on and off the track between Ron Dennis, Hamilton and Alonso.
One of the highlights was in Hungary when Alonso impeded on Hamilton's pit stop during qualifying.
Alonso stayed in the pits longer than expected with Hamilton waiting from behind for his team mate to depart.
The relationship of Alonso and McLaren changed after that and the two time champ would fail to defend his title in the final race to Kimi Raikkonen.
There were more opportunities missed when Alonso joined Ferrari in 2010.
His first season with the Italian giants saw himself, McLaren's Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber compete for the championship.
The season finale under the lights in Abu Dhabi had Alonso frustratingly race behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov as Vettel won the championship decider.
Two years later was another chance for Alonso to finally add to his two championships.
The start of the season had many criticising Ferrari's F2012 by noting that it would not compete for race wins.
Malaysia was the second round of the 2012 championship and Alonso crossed the finish line in first.
He then went on to win in Valencia and Germany to compete against Vettel.
Alonso yet again missed out on championship glory yet again in the final race of 2012 in Brazil despite finishing ahead of Vettel.
Those three world championship misses could have been the other way around and the F1 world could have looked up to Alonso as a five time world champion, at least five times.
Alonso's talent was swept under the carpet
The 2012 championship was his last competitive season in Formula 1 in terms of fighting for the driver's championship.
Alonso would have two more seasons at Ferrari before rejoining McLaren ahead of the 2015 season.
The partnership of Alonso and Ferrari was expected to have been so much more.
Despite the past of Alonso and McLaren, the future was looking good for the Spaniard after both sewed up their patches from the marks of 2007.
Alonso would join a McLaren team that reunited with Honda as their engine supplier.
McLaren Honda had a whale of a time in the 1980s when Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna won a combine of seven driver's championships.
A wish of history repeating itself instead went down the drain as McLaren's three year partnership with the Japanese engine provider was a complete disaster.
Most races saw Alonso compete at the back of the grid, engine failures resulting in many retirements and the man himself complaining a number of times to his engineers on the team radio.
Alonso blamed the poor performances towards the Honda engines and this would see both the team and Honda disagree on a contract extension.
Three seasons of Alonso getting nowhere in his second spell at McLaren left him with no choice but to continue his F1 career at the British team.
When McLaren and Renault agreed to join up ahead of the current season, some experts believed the team could start to finally compete for podiums.
But instead, they overestimated McLaren's continuous problems that has hovered over them for the past five years.
Alonso's highest finish in 2018 so far is 5th place and this is on more than one occasion as the 37 year old has made dreadful racing cars look good - thanks to his never endless racing talent.
Triple Crown can revive Alonso's career
Alonso has not won an F1 race in over five years and the last time he achieved crossing the finish line first was at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.
When the McLaren driver turned up at Le Mans in an attempt to win the famous 24 hour race, the pedigree is still strong with this one.
June saw Alonso win Le Mans 24 for Toyota alongside his teammates of Sebastian Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.
Alonso fans had finally got to see a winning smile many had missed for the past five years.
It showed the 37 year old has still got it in him to win the biggest races of the motorsport calendar.
Once the current season comes to a close in November, Alonso will continue to pursue his dream of becoming the second man of achieving the triple crown.
The only other racer to do it is Graham Hill by winning the Monaco Grand Prix, Le Mans 24 and Indy 500.
Alonso has won in the streets of Monte Carlo on two occasions which now just leaves Indy 500 without a tick next to it.
He has the experience of being on an Indy Car field and it will prove vital ahead of the 2019 edition of Indy 500.
The question is will Alonso do an entire season of Indy Car in the United States of America? Or is Indy 500 the only racing event Alonso wants on his 2019 calendar.
A triple crown success can revive Alonso's career and remind the motorsport world that he is one of the best to have ever raced behind the wheel especially in Formula 1.
An F1 career left with many ifs and buts.
Has Alonso made the right decision to leave F1? Comment below...
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