Revealed: The one ability Fernando Alonso would steal from a rival driver
Fernando Alonso has picked Jenson Button’s ability to read the weather as the one thing he would steal from another Formula 1 driver.
Button’s skill in reading conditions came to the forefront at the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix where the Brit won in remarkable circumstances during a race that lasted over four hours.
While not team-mates at the time, Button and Alonso would eventually link up at McLaren where the Spaniard got a good look at the skill of the 2009 World Champion.
Fernando Alonso praises Jenson Button’s ability
Alonso and Button spent two seasons at McLaren together and while it is a time both drivers would most like to forget, they did seem to build a good friendship.
Perhaps then that is why Alonso was willing to pay his former team-mate the highest compliment possible by stating he is the one driver who possess a skill Alonso is jealous of.
Sat alongside Aston Martin brand ambassador and former Formula 1 driver Pedro de la Rosa in a new instalment of Aston Martin’s content series ‘A Pitstop With’, presented by Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0%, the question was put to Alonso and he replied with Button’s name.
“I would take from Button, from Jenson, the way of reading these weather conditions,” Alonso said. “And how the track evolves in damp conditions.”
De La Rose meanwhile opted to take Alonso’s ability to go quickly into a corner.
Speaking a few years earlier, Alonso remarked that Button was perhaps the finest team-mate he ever shared a garage with.
“For me, he’s probably the best team-mate I’ve had,” said Alonso in 2019.
“He is very fast. He is very competitive inside the car, always and in all conditions, but outside the car as well he is a very nice guy, a true gentleman, and also very committed to the sport. He’s always running in the simulator, working with the team, spending whatever time is necessary with the engineers, being 100 per cent physically all year long.
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“As a package I think he’s the best.”
The feeling is clearly mutual too with Button remarking how fun it was to drive against each other at McLaren.
“Fernando would play games a lot more,” Button said when comparing him to Lewis Hamilton. “Which, in a way… I was at a point in my career that I was up for games. We weren’t fighting against anyone else, we [McLaren] were so slow that we were fighting against each other.
“We played a lot of games, some of them that I don’t really want to mention too much. Most of the time it was more just holding back things, holding back pace, holding back information about setups and what have you.
“We understood each other and we definitely respected each other, and we knew that when we did things the other guy could take it. I respected Fernando for that.”
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