F1 News
Alonso's manager admits: 'He had a concrete offer from this team'
- Ludo van Denderen
Fernando Alonso's manager has claimed that the Spaniard was very close to not driving for Lawrence Stroll's Aston Martin team at all. Flavio Briatore, who has looked after Alonso's affairs for 20 years, reveals that the Spaniard had a concrete offer from Williams to continue his career there in 2022.
At that time, Alonso was racing for Alpine, the team that wanted to commit him for 2023 as well. Talks were in an advanced stage, but a signature on a contract was never made. In Auto, Motor und Sport, Briatore, who is now also an adviser to Alpine, explains how it all worked out at the time.
"Fernando wanted to stay because the season before wasn't that bad. We wanted to sign the contract in Canada. Then Laurent Rossi (then CEO of Renault. ed.) suddenly disappeared. We could no longer reach him. Then I started talking to Lawrence Stroll from Aston Martin.
"We even had an offer from Williams. I said to them: get your shop in order first. In the end, we signed with Aston Martin because we didn't get along well with Alpine's management. The mistakes were made by the management," Briatore said.
Briatore critiques former management:
Alpine F1 has since changed management, and Briatore has returned to the old nest, where he achieved so much success in the past. Looking back at 2022, the Italian comes to a harsh conclusion: "Surely it takes a fair amount of incompetence when you lose two drivers like Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri in one summer."
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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