The Qatar Grand Prix welcomed on the third step of the podium Fernando Alonso, with the Spaniard from Alpine who thus achieved the first placement in the top three since his return to F1. The 40-year-old Asturian, two-time world champion in 2005 and 2006, had in fact returned to the Circus this year after an absence lasting three seasons, signing with the French team. After having provided a valuable contribution to the first success of the transalpine team, which took place with Esteban Ocon, the former Ferrari driver thus took the second place on the podium in the history of the team, also establishing two particular records. Thanks to the third place in Losail, in fact, the Iberian driver recorded the new absolute record inherent in the greater number of GPs between two podiums won, in addition to the new record of the greater number of races between the first and the last podium obtained in his career.
In the first case, Alonso hadn’t celebrated with champagne since Hungarian Grand Prix 2014, when he finished 2nd at the wheel of the Ferrari. From that moment until the last Qatari round, the Spaniard had played 146 GP without ever reliving the joy of the podium, beating the previous record of 128 races belonging to Alexander Wurz. The latter, however, can still console himself by maintaining the leadership of this special ranking, but only with regard to the time period that has elapsed. In fact, the Austrian took 7 years and 9 months – six months longer than Alonso – before taking 3rd place at the San Marino GP with McLaren, breaking the spell that had lasted since the British GP. 1997. In that race he always finished third, but at the wheel of Benetton.
The case of the 98 overall podiums won by Alonso in his career is different, the first of which was recorded on the occasion of the 2003 Malaysian Grand Prix, when curiously, here too, came in third place. Since then, the 40-year-old Spaniard has played an overall total of 355 races, supplanting the previous primacy of Michael Schumacher. The seven-time German world champion had in fact spent 347 GPs between his first podium in the 1992 Mexican Grand Prix, with Benetton, and the last one in the 2012 European Grand Prix, in that case with Mercedes. Even in this case, however, the past years were twenty, contrary to the 18 and 7 months that passed for Alonso, still second in this specific temporal ranking.
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