All sports have heroes, and Formula 1 is no exception. Justin Hynes interviews the latest rising star, 21-year-old Fernando Alonso.
Great white hopes. Sport is full of 'em. Kids from out of nowhere who can bend a ball like Uri Geller on the spoons. Kids who can hit like an exocet. The next Becks, the new Tiger.
Formula One is full of them. A sport clothed in so much purple prose and hyperbole can't help but churn them out. Nobody's pretty good or fairly quick. Potential is wound up exponentially. Quick becomes mega-quick becomes whatever's quicker than that. Everyone's the next Hakkinen, Schumacher, dammit, the next Senna. And, as with white hopes through the ages, most turn out to be merely pale.
Fernando Alonso is a great white hope. Three years ago the Spaniard, at 17, won the Nissan World Series in his home country. As part of the prize, the kid from Oviedo was given a test with Minardi, the team being backed by World Series sponsor Telefonica.
A poisoned chalice, perhaps. Yet when the times came back, more than one set of eyebrows raised in appreciation. The kid had matched the team's race drivers, had made the Minardi look a proper race car.
Nothing new. Tests work out - or don't. Some of the dullest guys ever to climb aboard an F1 car had done okay in tests only to be proved wanting when they made it to the "show". The kid would have to show something more.
Spa 2000. On the undercard to round 14 of a thrilling F1 title fight being waged between Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher, is the final round of the European F3000 series championship. On the ultimate drivers' circuit, Alonso blitzes his rivals, steals the show with a drive of dazzling panache. It has risk, skill, control, outrageous gifts.
Now we're listening. The ears include those of Flavio Briatore. He signs Alonso to a Renault Sport contract and farms the kid out to Minardi for a season in the F1 minors.
In race one of the 2001 season Alonso takes a car built just three weeks before the start of competition, armed with a now three-year old, massively overweight, massively underpowered Cosworth and brings it home in 12th.
He'll bring it home eight more times during the year. Team-mate Tarso Marques, once regarded as something of a great white hope himself, will finish just six times.
So to this year. After a year of testing at Renault, Alonso is racing again. A great white hope. Shining so hard you'd go snowblind just looking at him. Youngest ever pole winner in Formula One. Three podiums so far.
Points in all races bar one. Last time out in Canada, a power circuit where under-powered Renault are supposed to struggle, he narrows a massive gap in the closing stages to pressure third-placed Juan Pablo Montoya all the way to the flag. White hot. A world champion in the making.
So you ask him. Does he believe that? "No," a slight smile. "Because if you do two or three mistakes in two or three races, the people who said that will be saying 'next year he should be in 3000 again'. It's too much. You just do your job. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. But as long as the team is happy with the job you are doing that's all that counts. Even if the results are not coming. I don't believe all the stuff people are saying."
But you know he does. He may not believe it from the fools in the media centre but he believes it in his heart. A driver has to believe he has a championship in him.
And the belief goes back to that Minardi test. In a world of a million clamouring junior series drivers, Alonso was heard. Did he realise just how loud his test times spoke, how important that test was.
"No, I don't think it was that important," he says dismissively. "It's always good to test a Formula One car. I didn't expect that the information about my test would be noticed. Sometimes you achieve a good result, a good lap and everybody talks about you. It's a good thing but you never plan this type of test.
"It was a good moment for me but I don't think it was a crucial moment in my career. For me it was just a normal moment." Career is a word that crops up with the Spaniard frequently. Time and again, his racing is referred to as his career. Whereas most young drivers are just happy to be here, knowing that unless they're on it every moment, the next is likely to be their last, Alonso seems to have a secure faith in his own longevity. It's borne of confidence, an unsinkable surety that he has what it takes, regardless of results.
Yet despite the career-minded approach, his progress has been left to the control of others. He seems almost careless of how he gets where he is, just secure that if he's put there, he can do the rest.
"I don't know if I was ready for a bigger team at that point," he says when asked if he was frustrated by being sent to Minardi for the 2001 season. "In that moment you can't think like that. There are other people doing the contracts and looking after your career. You only drive the car. I didn't really think about whether it was the right thing to do or not. I just did it." And this from when he was brought back to Renault but as test driver. "It was never definite (that he'd get to race). They just said 'you're the test driver'. But I was confident in myself and I knew that if I did my job well and maybe then I'd get the chance to race. I was completely confident." Those years, fortunately, did him good. Watching and learning. Figuring the sport.
"Minardi was a very important year definitely," he says emphatically. "It's interesting to do the first year in a small team - to learn things about the sport, to get used to the environment because it's a completely different category. To be one year with Minardi with no pressure, learning all the time, and finishing the races that was very positive. It was definitely a good year for my career." And a year testing at Renault? "Again, it was a year to learn. To learn and prepare myself to be ready 100 per cent for what is a very important year for Renault, this 2003 season. I tried to learn as much as I could and I think this year I've arrived completely ready. That's what the team wanted and I think I have done that." And how. That Malaysia pole, those podiums, third in the drivers' championship standings.
"I'm very satisfied," he says with a nervous smile, as if awareness of his own gifts means admission of a job well done comes hard. "I've had unbelievable moments with the team, with the pole, with the podium finishes, all the sacrifice I've done with Minardi and in testing; with these seven races I've got my reward." The reward was Barcelona, pushing Michael Schumacher all the way to the flag in front of Alonso's home crowd. Racing with the best.
"It was the best race this season and was a moment that will be difficult to forget," he says simply, that nervous smile playing at his lips again. And the knowledge that Schumacher, who recently renewed his Ferrari contract, will be around until 2006 fills the Spaniard with anticipation.
"It's a good thing for all the drivers, not just me, to race with Michael for three more years. It's a chance to beat him. We know it's tough because he's the best, has the best car as well. If you beat them it's doubly satisfying, you've won and you've beaten the best." And then he pauses for a moment, reflecting on the prospect. "We hope one day we beat them... and we will." It's easy to believe him. Talking to this 21-year-old kid leaves you with little clue as to what makes him tick. The same laser-guided focus that has allowed him to draw in every nuance of how to run a race and a race car has also encompassed the assimilation of Formula One PR null-speak.
The boldest answers come in the shape of a flying lap in Malaysia that stood on the edge of chaos yet maintained perfect balance, in the flashing sequence of laps in Montreal that allowed him to hover threateningly behind a driver who two seasons ago was the great white hope.
The erratic Juan Pablo Montoya may still have that hope in him. Alonso looks more. Maybe hope is to weak a word. Try great white sure thing.