It’s been a year of frustration for double World Champion Fernando Alonso, with the Spaniard having endured perhaps the largest batch of bad luck ever seen by one driver across an entire season.
Reliability problems most commonly with his power unit, ridiculed the 41-year-old’s season, something which came as a huge frustration to the incredibly talented driver.
The frustration of retiring multiple times due to the same issue eventually became too much for the Spaniard, who started to snap at Alpine towards the end of the duo’s relationship.
His on-track battles with Esteban Ocon were also no help to the matter, with the pair having often shown little respect whilst battling on the circuit.
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This was evident at the Brazilian Grand Prix during the sprint race, where the pair collided not once, but twice.
Alonso’s disapproval of the collisions and his team-mate were shared with the media rather publicly by the veteran, something which failed to go down particularly well.
Interestingly, former team-mate and 2009 World Champion Jenson Button has discussed his own relationship with the Spaniard to 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg, with a clip of the pair’s discussion having been uploaded onto Twitter.
Button and Alonso were alongside each other for two years at McLaren in 2015 and 2016, a period of time where the Woking-based outfit were nothing short of terrible, given their poor chassis and an incredibly bad Honda power unit.
Given that the duo were at the back for the majority of their partnership, Button has revealed some of the “games” the pair would play and that the now Aston Martin driver would retire when behind the Brit.
“Fernando would play games a lot more,” revealed Button.
“I was at a point in my career where I was up for games, we weren’t fighting against anyone else as we were so slow, that we were only fighting against each other. We played a lot of games, some of them that I don’t really want to mention too much.”
Button did go on to reveal some of the games that the duo played, after being forced into it by Rosberg, who was understandably eager to hear.
“Most of the time it was more just holding back things, holding back pace, holding back information about set-ups and what have you,” Button continued.
“We understood each other and we definitely respected each other; we knew that when we did things the other guy could take it. So I respect him for that, and even if Fernando wasn’t quicker at a race weekend he could still get a result.
“That was the thing, if he couldn’t quite find the balance that worked for him, there was a way that he’d always be able to get the best out of the car. Whether he would try to pit early or if you were in front of him, he’d try a different strategy and sometimes it’d work.
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“There were other times actually that if he was behind me he would say “oh there is a problem with the car, there’s a problem with the car” and he’d retire from the race,” Button admitted.
“For real?” asked Rosberg whilst laughing.
“Yeah,” Button replied.