There is a level of anticipation, hope and excitement building up around Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix and ... no ... it is not all about the expected confrontation of reprisal between bitterly warring factions Sebastian Vettel and his championship challenger Lewis Hamilton.
Despite the very real promise of relentless wheel-to-wheel action up front, a fascinating continuation of the dramatic saga enveloping Ferrari’s four times champion Vettel and his Mercedes’ rival Hamilton, the champion thrice, the focus could well, and rightly so, fall on a struggling also-ran ... Fernando Alonso.
The Spanish double-champion, now 35, and on a career countdown in a McLaren falling disastrously short of its glorious grand prix history as a regular winner and title bearer, has been guaranteed by his besieged Honda engine supplier that he will have a vastly improved car for the clash around the picturesque Red Bull Ring in the Styrian mountains near Spielberg.
And the long overdue treat has boosted Alonso enough to promise an all-action replay, or much, much better, of his tenth place last time out in Azerbaijan when he scored the team’s first points of their trouble-torn season and vowed there was more to come if he was given a car to match his towering ability and burning ambition to be a winner again.
The threat of Honda being offloaded by sadly disappointed multi-champions McLaren may have been eased and temporarily suspended by the welcome promise by the Japanese giants to give them an updated, upgraded engine that will, at long last, be competitive. With 54 gear changes a lap and a total of 3,834 for the 190mile showdown on Sunday, the pressure will pile onto a team that has endured too many embarrassing retirements and failures before the Azerbaijan breakthrough.
It lifted Alonso’s ambitious dreams and, for the moment, dispelled widespread notions, behind the scenes, that he has threatened to quit the UK-based team and split to either Ferrari or Mercedes who would happily match his £30m-year-salary (Dh142.4 million).
Ironically McLaren have recorded the most wins of any team in the Austrian GP ... six. Not that Alonso is likely to make it seven — but he will be determinedly hunting down a podium.
His calm attitude to what must be a thoroughly frustrating spell is an admirable trait very much appreciated by his McLaren hierarchy equally disappointed at Honda’s long overdue rectification of their abject failure.
And, upliftingly, if surprisingly, he reckons he is driving at his best right now.
To underpin that claim, after his vastly advanced position in Baku, he enthused: “I really enjoyed that race. Our performance not only shows that the foundations of our car are strong — but also that our team, the engineers, mechanics and strategists, are also real racers ready, poised and waiting to take advantage of any situation.”
Full of fighting talk and anxious to boost his back-up team’s morale he went on: “The two points I scored in Azerbaijan may have been small consolation — but it was a result that gave us a massive lift and it will have driven us forward. And there are firm and solid reasons to feel optimistic about our weekend in Austria.
“It is a circuit not so dependent on sheer power as some of the recent races and I believe our car will be better suited to the tight twists and turns of the Spielberg challenge than any before it. But we will have to push hard. And that’s my aim. I am all fired up.
“What is heartening is that we have a couple of useful steps forward coming on the car and they could, and should, take us forward.
So I am looking forward to a positive outcome where I will do my utmost to get everything I can out of a car that should be an improvement.” In a further boost to his own self-confidence and, no doubt, to the glee of McLaren and Alonso fans worldwide, he added: “I believe that right now I am driving at my best. I am happy with the prospect of my car and I am able to attack the corners to the best of my own ability.
“I feel really competitive this year and am definitely, definitely enjoying a feeling that I am in top form. In terms of keeping motivated with the hunger for success on a high level, despite the results up to Azerbaijan, I know I am very good right now and, honestly, enjoying the challenge I am facing and building up to with a lot of races to go. It is a good and thrilling time to my career.
“Sure, it can be extremely frustrating when you are not competitive and the car does not perform like you want it to, but in troubled and testing times you have to learn to be patient. And I am.”
How much of all that dialogue is designed to disguise any ongoing disdain over the team’s current rock-bottom championship placing or to spur and uplift the backroom boys from their inevitable despair is questionable. Either way he is being astutely political.
His last win, his 32nd, was in homeland Spain in 2013.
But since 2014, after being the runner-up in Hungary, and third in China, he has dropped down among the no-hopers — with a string of non-finishes in a forlorn Honda-powered former world-beating car.
Maybe the Austrian showdown, a circuit that should suit both him and his car’s handleability, will be his and the team’s turning point. Few F1 insiders would begrudge him the reward he seeks so eagerly. The same goes for legends McLaren.
