FERNANDO ALONSO VS MAX VERSTAPPEN? PUNDIT MAKES CASE FOR RED BULL DREAM TEAM

Fernando Alonso would be able to “handle” Red Bull’s “difficult to drive” RB20 car better than Sergio Perez during the F1 2024 season.

That is the claim of former F1 driver Marc Surer, who believes Alonso‘s adaptability would make him a more suitable team-mate to Max Verstappen.

Would Fernando Alonso beat Max Verstappen in the Red Bull RB20?

Having produced the most dominant season in history in 2023, winning 21 out of a possible 22 races as Verstappen eased to a third consecutive World Championship, Red Bull had been expected to crush the opposition once again in F1 2024.

Yet despite starting the season with four wins from the first five races – including three one-two finishes for Verstappen and Perez in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Japan – Red Bull have wilted in the face of a renewed threat from the likes of McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.

Verstappen has not won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23, a run of six races his longest victory drought since 2020, with his lead over Lando Norris reduced to 62 points.

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Red Bull’s advantage over McLaren has been cut to eight points, meanwhile, and the Milton-Keynes team could lose the lead of the Constructors’ Championship since May 2022 at next weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.

Despite signing a new two-year contract as recently as June, Perez was considered fortunate to retain his seat at Red Bull following the summer break after a desperate run of form left him at serious risk of being dropped mid-season.

It remains to be seen whether Red Bull will revisit the situation as the final eight races of F1 2024 unfold, with Perez not yet guaranteed to remain alongside Verstappen next season despite tentatively improved performances in the Netherlands and Italy since the season resumed last month.

With Red Bull currently struggling to understand the RB20, Surer – who made a total of 82 F1 starts for the likes of Ensign, Arrows and Brabham between 1979 and 1986 – believes the team require a driver capable of adapting to a recalcitrant car.

And he believes Aston Martin driver and two-time World Champion Alonso, who is known to have a healthy relationship with Verstappen, would be the ideal candidate to tame the RB20.

He told German publication Motorsport-Total: “It needs a driver who can adapt to the car, because I think the Red Bull is difficult to drive.

“Fernando Alonso would be fast with the car, one hundred per cent because he can handle it.”

Surer went on to mention Carlos Sainz, the three-time race winner Williams F1 2025 signing, and Audi F1 capture Nico Hulkenberg as other names who would represent a clear upgrade on Perez.

Alonso, who has been occasionally linked with Red Bull in the past, announced in April that he had signed a contract to remain with Aston Martin until at least the end of the F1 2026 season.

Aston Martin are set to make significant strides under the new regulations in 2026, with the team set to begin a works partnership with Honda, the Japanese manufacturer that currently supplies engines to Red Bull.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin are expected to confirm the signing of F1 design guru Adrian Newey, who has masterminded Red Bull’s success with Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel over the last two decades, within days.

Alonso remains without a race victory since winning the Spanish Grand Prix in his penultimate season with Ferrari in 2013, with 2026 set to mark 20 years since the last of his two consecutive title triumphs with Renault.

Appearing on the Formula For Success podcast last month, Alonso’s long-serving manager and former Renault F1 team principal Flavio Briatore indicated that Alonso is likely to retire at the end of 2026 – by which time he will be 45 – as things stand.

Briatore said: “I don’t know [about his future].

“If you ask me if Fernando wants to continue after we finish the contract, our last year will be 2026 for the moment.

“What he wants to do after, I don’t know. Does he want to continue for one more year?

“The performance is there. You see the performance of Fernando, it’s there. It’s not a question of him losing concentration, during the race he’s always there.

“If he’s 11th, he wants to be 10th. If he’s 10th, he wants to be ninth. He wants the car to be competitive. He’s qualifying well, he’s racing well.

“I don’t know, honestly, if he wants to stop with 2026 as his last year or if he wants to go ahead. Honestly, I don’t know.

“It depends on the feeling he has about racing and the timing, I don’t know if he’ll have a family at the time and whatever.

“But for sure, he is somebody unique. I’ve never seen somebody like that, so determined every day, every day, every day. Never give up. Unbelievable.”

2024-09-08T07:13:45Z dg43tfdfdgfd