Formula 1 superstar Fernando Alonso is a big fan of MotoGP. He’s attended multiple races, including last year’s Austrian Grand Prix.
Alonso saw Francesco Bagnaia win both races after his fellow Spaniard Jorge Martin had taken pole position. Just like this season, the race took place during F1’s summer break.
The two-time world champion described MotoGP riders as ‘heroes’ back in 2016. He said it was ‘unbelievable’ to watch the bikes from trackside.
Both F1 and MotoGP are now under the ownership of American conglomerate Liberty Media. The two-wheel series could take inspiration from its counterpart as it looks to grow.
Fernando Alonso struck by how much time MotoGP riders have during a race weekend
When Alonso was in the Austrian Grand Prix paddock, he was greeted by several riders, including Marc Marquez and Jack Miller. There was a sense of mutual admiration.
The F1 veteran was speaking to Davide Brivio, his former colleague at the Alpine team. According to Brivio, Alonso was shocked that the riders had time to stop and chat.
During his own race weekends, he finds his schedule completely full due to marketing events. This could become the new reality for MotoGP stars if Liberty are successful in attracting more commercial interest.
“I was talking last year at one point with Davide Brivio, the Trackhouse team boss, veteran MotoGP team boss,” Simon Patterson said on the Pit Talk podcast. “He also spent a bit of time at Alpine in F1, and he was telling me that at Austria last year, Fernando Alonso came to spectate MotoGP for the day.
“They were standing in the middle of the paddock together, him and Brivio. Marc Marquez came past and had stopped to say hello, and Jack Miller had come past and stopped to say hello, because they all know who Alonso is, and he’s a MotoGP fan, so he knows who they are.
“After four, five MotoGP riders had stopped to say hello on their way past, he turned to Brivio and he said, ‘These guys do not know how easy their lives are! There is no time in my schedule in an F1 weekend to stop in the paddock and say hello to someone’.
“They have this crazy schedule of activations, events and promos and all this stuff that they’re doing on stage with their sponsors and their team. The MotoGP riders do have an easier time – but at the same time no-one in F1 is getting out of a free practice session and needing to go immediately to a physio session because they’ve fallen off twice at 100mph!”
What has Fernando Alonso said about Marc Marquez?
In an interview with GPOne in August 2022, Alonso described himself as Marquez’s ‘number one fan’. At the time, the Ant of Cervera was still dealing with the complications of an arm injury he’d suffered in 2020.
Marquez only took part in 12 races that year, but Alonso was ‘100%’ confident that he could win again. Now that he’s back fit and riding a factory Ducati, that prediction has aged wonderfully.
KTM star Pedro Acosta has called Marquez the toughest rider on the grid. One suspects that Liberty will try to paint the stars of the series as gladiators, which shouldn’t be difficult.
Indeed, Martin Brundle loves the resilience of MotoGP riders, who are willing to ride through the kind of injuries that would make for a lengthy absence in almost every other sport. “That’s my kind of sportsperson,” Brundle says.
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