He saw the Safety Car coming before anyone else
He was 25 seconds clear of the field and still found time to watch the trackside TV. That’s the kind of spare capacity that defined Fernando Alonso at his peak, according to a former colleague who is now an F1 team boss. The story comes from engineer Ayao Komatsu, who worked alongside Alonso and remembers moments that still sound unreal today.
Picture the scene: Canadian Grand Prix, late in the race, Alonso out front and in control. Behind, Kimi Raikkonen is the nearest threat but miles back on the stopwatch. Then Jacques Villeneuve hits the ‘Wall of Champions’ on the exit of the final chicane. Debris, drama, and the kind of impact that usually brings out the Safety Car. Before the pit wall even clocks what’s happened, Alonso comes on the radio: “Get ready, it’s going to be a Safety Car.”
How did he know so fast? He admitted it later with a shrug. He was so comfortable with the car and pace that he’d started glancing at the giant screens around the circuit. He saw the crash live, processed what it meant for race control, and warned the team in real time. That quick call gave the garage a precious head start: prepare for neutralized laps, revise pit windows, and protect track position without panic.
Drivers often talk about “spare mental capacity.” It’s the difference between hanging on and actually managing a race from inside the cockpit. Most are flat out, juggling braking points, tyre temperatures, and battery maps. Alonso, on his best days, did all that and still had bandwidth to cross-check live coverage, anticipate race control, and plan two moves ahead. The Montreal call wasn’t luck. It was situational awareness elevated to a skill.
That awareness isn’t just about big moments. It shows up in the details—reading traffic on out-laps, sensing how rivals are heating tyres, and framing strategy not as a plan on a page but as an evolving picture. The Safety Car example jumps off the page because it’s cinematic. But the habit behind it is what matters: constant scanning, constant updates, no panic.
Where Alonso found time—and others didn’t
Komatsu’s memories go back to earlier races where the strategy didn’t fall Alonso’s way. At one event in changing conditions, the call was made to refresh only the front intermediate tyres during his first stop. Unorthodox? Yes. It left the car unbalanced and gave away bite on corner exit when he needed it most. Later, a sticking wheel nut in the switch to slicks cost yet more time. That’s the sort of double hit that usually buries your afternoon.
It didn’t bury Alonso. He reset, recalibrated, and started pulling time back. While his teammate Giancarlo Fisichella cycled ahead after those pit dramas, a cautious approach into Turn 1 on the out-lap opened the door to Michael Schumacher. Once behind, Fisichella struggled to reassert control. Alonso, meanwhile, hunted him down—roughly 10 seconds erased—and grabbed second at the flag. Pace matters, but recovery drives like that are built on clarity in chaos.
Komatsu draws a sharp contrast to make his point: “Jenson couldn’t do what Fernando did.” It’s not a dig at Jenson Button, who had world-class strengths of his own—silky smooth inputs, tyre nursing, and superb feel when the track was evolving. The point is about cognitive load. Button’s gift was flow and finesse. Alonso’s party trick was bandwidth under fire, the ability to compute the whole race while attacking the next apex.
There’s a reason engineers rave about that trait. When a driver processes more, you can run bolder plans. You can risk an undercut in marginal windows, because he’ll hit the out-lap targets to the tenth while still defending if he drops into traffic. You can pivot mid-stint when the clouds roll in, because he’s already told you where the grip is and which corners are biting. The car might be the same; the outcomes aren’t.
Montreal is a perfect case study for how seconds turn into results. Spotting a likely Safety Car early lets a team get tyres, tools, and people ready without burning laps in confusion. If you’re about to lose a pit window, a 10-second warning can be the difference between staying out and getting jumped while the pack compresses. Few drivers call those shots confidently, because the risk of being wrong is real. Alonso made those calls with conviction and, crucially, with accuracy.
Even the “bad” days underline the same theme. The split-tyre approach on inters? It might buy bite on turn-in but punish you on traction with a wet track evolving lap to lap. The jammed wheel nut? That’s free time gone, plus heat lost in the tyres while the car sits. Most drivers carry that frustration for laps. Alonso tended to turn it into targets: sector deltas, attack windows, and a measured plan to pick cars off.
Teammate dynamics magnified it. If you lose position to someone like Schumacher by being too cautious on an out-lap, getting it back takes bravery and precision. Alonso’s response that day—closing a double-digit gap and executing for P2—wasn’t about magic pace. It was about staying precise while wired into the big picture: how the tyres were coming in, where rivals were vulnerable, and when to take the risk.
People love to debate pure speed, but championship-level drivers are separated by subtler things: how quickly they process new info, how calmly they make high-cost decisions, and how often they’re right. In the cockpit, you’re not just a driver; you’re strategist, spotter, and analyst. The best engineers want the radio to sound like that. With Alonso, it often did.
That’s why a simple line—“Jenson couldn’t do what Fernando did”—hits home. It’s not about lap time on an empty track. It’s about who keeps the race in their head when everything is moving, who can warn the team about a Safety Car while slicing through the final chicane, and who turns setbacks into a plan with laps to spare. The stories endure because they show a driver doing more than drive.
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