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Dec.11 (GMM) Fernando Alonso has offered one of his most candid reflections on the mental battles behind staying motivated in years without victories – and the surprising “slowness” he felt when he returned to Formula 1 after a sabbatical.
Speaking to DAZN, nearly a decade after his second and last title win, the 44-year-old veteran described the internal conversations and resilience needed when results aren’t coming.
“When you haven’t won for a while and you don’t have the right equipment, like I have these past few years with the car, you need to have conversations with yourself, many times,” he said.
“At home, you have to get up and go train by yourself. You talk to yourself for many hours, look at your scars and videos from the past, and tell yourself that you are still that person, not the current one, who right now can’t get the result you need.
“You can’t have ego, because that will slow you down and won’t help you at all, but you do need a lot of self-esteem and confidence,” added the Spaniard. “When things are going your way or not, that confidence has to be bulletproof. It’s difficult to balance ego and confidence.”
Alonso also recalled the shock of feeling slower after his break from the sport.
“When I came back to F1, in the first tests, I thought I was performing the same as when I’d left,” he said. “But the laptimes said otherwise – they showed I was a few tenths slower.
“I didn’t have an answer for how to find those tenths, because I was pushing to the limit of what I could do, but it’s the cognitive system, something innate that we have and that you develop with practice, that when you have a break, you do a ‘reset’,” he explained.
“It’s like getting back on a bicycle and having to put the wheels back on because you’ve lost your balance. These things, which seem easy from the outside, if you have the talent you’ll get back on and go fast, but your body, your brain, your senses have to reawaken.”
