Fernando Alonso arrived in Miami with the usual switch flicked firmly to “race mode”, but there was a new layer to the familiar routine. Earlier this year, Alonso and his partner, Spanish DAZN broadcaster Melissa Jiminez, welcomed their first child — a son named Leonard — and the two-time world champion admitted the change at home is already reshaping the way he’s thinking about what comes next.
He was upbeat when he spoke to Spanish media on the ground in Florida, saying mother and baby were doing well. “A super happy, very special moment, and now, back to work!” was the line — the sort of brisk, no-nonsense pivot you’d expect from a driver who’s made an entire career out of compartmentalising.
But the bigger question now isn’t whether Alonso still wants to race. It’s how long he wants to keep doing it — and whether the sport’s timeline still matches his own.
Alonso is 44, in the final year of his current Aston Martin deal, and 2026 is already his 24th season on an F1 grid that he first joined when some of his current rivals were still in primary school. His CV doesn’t need polishing: two titles with Renault, a reputation forged in eras of very different cars, and a second act that has repeatedly flirted with a fairytale ending.
That ending hasn’t arrived. His last win remains the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, and while he came close again after joining Aston Martin — three second-place finishes in 2023 during that early-season surge — the past couple of years have been a grind. This season, Aston Martin has been fighting a cocktail of problems: vibrations, gearbox issues, and a car that simply hasn’t produced enough downforce to be a week-in, week-out threat.
Into that mix comes something that doesn’t show up on a timing screen.
“I have some thoughts, I cannot lie,” Alonso told Sky Sports. “It does change the way you see life.”
The intriguing part is that fatherhood hasn’t pushed him towards the exit in the way people often assume it might. If anything, it’s tugging him back towards the cockpit — at least for long enough that Leonard might actually remember what his father does for a living.
“I have to say that it is going in the other direction,” Alonso said. “I want to race so he sees me racing. But until he is aware of things, maybe it’s a couple of years and I don’t want to race four or five years again!
“I was thinking, if I race one or two more years, if he will have any memory or any understanding of what is going on at the paddock and things like that? I would like not to stop before he is in the paddock, or he sits in my car, and this kind of thing.”
That’s Alonso in a nutshell: deeply competitive, yes, but also sentimental in a very specific, sharply-defined way. He isn’t talking about a vague desire to “spend more time with family”. He’s talking about creating a moment — his son in the garage, in the paddock, sitting in the car — the kind of image that would mean something to him long after the last lap.
And, crucially, it sets a very different frame around the usual retirement chatter. This isn’t a driver dragging himself to the end because he can’t let go. It’s a driver weighing whether one more contract is enough to turn racing into a shared memory rather than a story told with old photos and YouTube clips.
There’s a practical side to it, too. Alonso has set himself a decision deadline: summer. Not because he’s panicking, but because F1 doesn’t wait. Seats get filled, projects get locked in, and even for a name as big as Alonso’s, you can’t leave the whole grid hanging until the autumn.
“Sometime in the summer, I need to make a decision,” he said. “At the moment I didn’t sit with myself to think about that. I never thought about it in a deep way and I need to speak with my family as well. I need to speak with my people first and decide what to do next year.”
He also made it clear he’s not treating this season’s frustrations as a definitive verdict on Aston Martin’s direction. Alonso believes there’s a case for staying if the team can turn the page and deliver a step forward — and he hinted that, in his mind, 2027 would represent “year two” of what he sees as the next phase of the project.
“If I continue racing, I think it will be a better season than this one with the project in year two,” he said.
Equally, he isn’t selling a life of quiet retirement. Alonso has never been that person, and he practically laughed off the idea of slowing down. If he steps away from F1, he expects to race elsewhere.
“If I stop racing, I know that I will race in other series,” he said. “I’m open to everything.”
Perhaps the most telling line, though, wasn’t about lap times or contracts. It was about belonging. Alonso insists his link to Aston Martin runs deeper than whether he’s physically in the car, and he expects to remain part of the paddock even if he decides 2026 is the end of his F1 driving chapter.
“I am also linked with this team, with this project. I want to succeed here behind the wheel or not being the wheel,” he said. “You will see me in the paddock even if I stop racing.”
In other words: fatherhood hasn’t diluted the obsession — it’s just given it a new audience. The next few months will decide whether Alonso’s 2027 story is told from inside the cockpit, or from the other side of the garage wall. Either way, it doesn’t sound like he’s going anywhere quietly.
