Fernando Alonso Announces F1 Retirement at End of 2018 Season

McLaren veteran Fernando Alonso has officially announced his retirement from Formula 1. The Spaniard will leave McLaren at the end of the season.

Even though he is considered one of the best drivers in F1, the 37-year-old has not won a race in five years. The Drivers’ World Championship has also eluded him for more than a decade.

Now, the two-time world champion will make a full-time switch to the Indy Car series. This is in order to pursue his ambition of winning the triple crown of motorsport.

The Spaniard has lost all hope of securing a front-running driver in F1 again. He has spent the last four years at the wrong end of the grid with McLaren. Even the sport’s current dominant forces – Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull will not glance in his direction.

Last week, Red Bull ruled out any chance of signing Alonso as a replacement for the outgoing Daniel Ricciardo. “He’s tended to cause a bit of chaos wherever he’s gone,” explained team boss Christian Horner.

McLaren have improved this season in the wake of their switch to Renault power. In the meantime, Alonso has out-qualified team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne in every session this season. But he has not finished on the podium since rejoining the team from Ferrari four years ago.

His first stint with McLaren was turbulent to say the least. He returned to the Enstone outfit for two more years before switching to Ferrari. During that time, he narrowly missed out on winning the Drivers’ World Championship twice.

His decision to quit Ferrari for the McLaren-Honda ‘project’ proved, in hindsight, to be a critical mistake.

Despite hopes that the reforged partnership would take the fight to Mercedes, the team underperformed in 2015. 2016 brought about a modest improvement but still finished ninth out of ten in the Constructors’ Championship – triggering their split with Honda.

By then, Alonso’s attention had already begun to turn to alternative motorsport series. He began to  and the prospect of achieving the ‘triple crown’ – consisting of winning Le Mans, the Indy 500 and the Monaco GP, which he first won a decade ago.

With McLaren’s permission, he missed last season’s Monaco GP to compete in the Indy 500 and won Le Mans at the first attempt with Toyota three months ago.