Flavio Briatore isn’t here for the character assassination. Alpine’s executive advisor — and, in practice, the man running the Enstone ship — has come out swinging in defence of Fernando Alonso, rejecting the long-held idea that the sport’s most seasoned racer is “difficult.”
The target: a narrative that’s clung to Alonso for years. The message: you’ve got him wrong.
“People say Fernando is hard to manage — a lot of rubbish,” Briatore told ESPN, clearly still irked by the label. In his view, Alonso’s not the problem child; he’s the standard-bearer. “He’s always a teammate. He makes everyone pull in the same direction. Just look at Aston Martin.”
That last line is the nub of it. At 44, the grid’s elder statesman is still the same relentless force who dragged Renault to back‑to‑back titles in 2005 and 2006 — the peak of his partnership with Briatore, and the reason the pair remain tightly aligned two decades on. Alonso’s palmarès hasn’t grown with wins since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, but the hunger hasn’t cooled. If anything, it’s sharpened.
Briatore even reached for a memorable image to describe it. Alonso, he said, is “like a Rottweiler.” Not elegant PR, perhaps, but you know exactly what he means: he never lets go. Through lean Sundays and long seasons, the Spaniard keeps gnawing at the problem until something gives.
In green, that attitude has become part of Aston Martin’s identity. The team has been busy putting proper foundations under its ambition: a modern campus at Silverstone, a long-awaited wind tunnel, and a recruitment drive that signals they’re not just here for the photo ops. The 2026 rules reset is the obvious target, but Alonso’s presence makes the years before it count; the standards he sets Monday through Saturday lift Sundays, even when the car falls short.
There’s a reason team owners love drivers like this. Alonso doesn’t just turn laps; he drags the project forward. Think back to his first season with Aston Martin, when a streak of early podiums revealed a car — and a team — coming alive. That momentum’s been harder to find since, but Alonso’s intensity hasn’t dimmed. He still qualifies above his weight, still turns awkward races into points, still makes the telemetry tell the truth in debrief. Ask any engineer: that stuff matters.
Briatore, of course, has skin in the game. He’s Alonso’s long-time manager and the man who helped power those Renault title runs. Nostalgia can blur edges. But on this, he’s got a point. For all the noise around Alonso’s politics in years past, you’ll struggle to find a mechanic who says he doesn’t show up, or a strategist who says he doesn’t listen. You don’t stick in Formula 1 for 22 seasons, across eras and regulations and bruising team moves, by being a bad teammate. You survive by making yourself indispensable.
The records don’t lie: two World Championships, 32 Grand Prix victories, and a legacy of making quick cars quicker — and average ones formidable. The win tally has been frozen for too long, and Alonso knows it. The gap since Barcelona 2013 hangs over every “what if?” But if Briatore’s right about the man’s loyalty and leverage inside a team, Aston Martin is still getting exactly what it paid for: a driver who refuses to let the standard slip, even when the stopwatch says the glory will have to wait.
The other truth is simpler. Motorsport loves its heroes tidy and its narratives tidy. Alonso has never been tidy. He’s flinty, demanding, and obsessed with the margins — the sort of personality that, under pressure, can be misread as friction. Briatore’s counterpunch is just a reminder that winning outfits need that edge. And while the next regulation shake-up is the dangling carrot for everyone outside the current sweet spot, Alonso’s value isn’t theoretical. It’s daily, it’s forensic, and it’s loud enough to rattle the walls of a brand-new factory.
So, is Fernando Alonso difficult? Only if you confuse difficult with uncompromising. Ask around the paddock and you’ll hear it in softer words: exacting, relentless, impossible to switch off. The kind of “problem” a team takes any day of the week — and twice on Sunday.
