Feature

21 Oct 2024

Fernando Alonso's remarkable F1 career in numbers

A faster reaction time than Usain Bolt, a trip to the Moon and an important date with Charles and Diana. As Fernando Alonso prepares to celebrate his 400th Grand Prix weekend in Mexico City, we crunch the remarkable numbers from an astonishing Formula One career to reveal the stats – and ultimate facts – that put his time at the pinnacle of motorsport into context.

In mathematics, a constant is defined as a quantity or parameter that does not change its value whatever the value of the variables under a given set of conditions.

In Formula One, a constant is defined as a time-bending 43-year-old from Oviedo: Fernando Alonso, for short.

F1 is an ever-changing, unpredictable sport with very few certainties. Yet, in Fernando, we have one: a continual, relentless presence at the pinnacle of motorsport for nearly a quarter of a century.

23 years on from his F1 debut and ahead of a staggering 400th Grand Prix weekend in Mexico, we reveal the remarkable numbers recorded by F1's ubiquitous star and break down the weird and wonderful facts and figures that mark Fernando's F1 career out from the ordinary.

The topline numbers

From epic title duels with Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen to more than a century of podiums, it's been a glittering F1 career for Fernando...

2 World Drivers' Championships
32 victories
2,329 World Championship points
106 podiums
22 pole positions
26 fastest laps

Rolling back the years

Defying the sands of time, Fernando is set to race on into his mid-40s.

Fernando has raced in more than a third of all F1 Grands Prix. 36 per cent of Grand Prix weekends have featured Fernando since the World Championship began in 1950.

Half a lifetime driving in F1. Fernando was born on 29 July 1981 and celebrated his 43rd birthday this year, in his 21st season as a Grand Prix driver. Come his 44th birthday, he will have spent half his life driving in F1.

Racing against F1 drivers from the '80s. Fernando made his F1 debut in the 2001 Australian Grand Prix – a race that also included Frenchman Jean Alesi, who made his own debut in 1989. It means that there is a still a driver on the grid in 2024 who raced against a driver that was active in F1 in the 1980s.

Going the distance

F1's ultimate marathon man. Fernando has clocked up the kilometres since his first Grand Prix.

Fernando has driven to the Moon. The distance between Earth and the Moon varies between 360,000 to 405,000km and, across all Grand Prix weekends and official test sessions, Fernando has surpassed the 360,000km mark at the wheel of an F1 car – recording 107,949km in races alone.

More than 70,000 laps behind the wheel of an F1 car. Across all official test and Grand Prix sessions, Fernando has completed more than 72,750 laps driving an F1 car, including 21,578 race laps.

Around the world

In the most international of sports, Fernando's passport has more stamps than most.

He's travelled around the world 50 times. An F1 team will have travelled about 120,000km during the 24-race F1 season this year, making the average distance to travel to a Grand Prix 5,000km. Including the 2024 Mexico City Grand Prix, Fernando has travelled to 400 Grands Prix during his career, which adds up to an astonishing distance of 2,000,000km travelled in total – roughly 50 times the circumference of the Earth.

He's raced in more than tenth of all world's countries. Fernando has raced in 29 different countries across five continents in his F1 career, equivalent to 12 per cent of all the nations on the planet. In the process, he has driven at 36 different circuits.

Head-to-head

Over the years, Fernando has gone wheel-to-wheel with some of F1's biggest names.

Fernando's record versus all his F1 team-mates stands in his favour at 292 to 107 in Qualifying and 262 to 117 in Grands Prix, with 20 double DNFs recorded in races.

He's raced against more than 100 F1 drivers. To date, Fernando has raced against 118 drivers in his F1 career. This equates to 15% of all drivers that have appeared in F1 history.

When Fernando made his F1 debut, Oscar Piastri hadn’t been born. Fernando has raced against four drivers in F1 who were not born when he made his debut in March 2001. They are Oscar Piastri (born April 2001), Liam Lawson (born February 2002), Franco Colapinto (born May 2003), and Ollie Bearman (born on the day Fernando finished on the podium at the Spanish GP in May 2005).

At the races

Fernando has one natural habitat: the cockpit.

His average speed is 186.634km/h. Fernando's average race speed in his F1 career.

735 pitstops. The number of pitstops Fernando has made in his career.

A five-hour pitstop. Fernando has spent a total of 17,995 seconds making pitstops during his career, including driving down the pitlane.

578 episodes of Drive to Survive. You would need to binge-watch 578 hours of Netflix's hit F1 documentary series to equal the amount of time Fernando has been racing behind the wheel of an F1 car.

A faster reaction time than Usain Bolt. The World Record breaker's reaction time in the men's 100m final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was 0.165s seconds. Fernando's reaction time at a race start on average is 0.16s. A hummingbird's wings will have flapped just 11 times in the time it takes Fernando to hit the throttle when the lights go out.

Faster than the blink of an eye. Fernando clinched a famous podium at the 2023 São Paulo Grand Prix by finishing ahead of Sergio Perez by 0.053s – about half the time it takes to blink an eye.

Motorsport royalty

A date with Charles and Diana. 29 July 1981. Fernando was born on the same day that the world was engrossed by the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer.

The Triple Crown. Fernando is the only active F1 driver to have competed in the Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours. His brace of Monaco Grand Prix and Le Mans 24 Hours wins now leave him one leg short of motorsport's elusive Triple Crown. Victory in the Indianapolis 500 would see him match a feat achieved by only one other driver, Graham Hill.

The magic number

14. Synonymous with the Spaniard, Fernando chose his driver number at the age of 14 on 14 July 1996 when he became karting world champion with the number on his kart.

Our thanks to Sean Kelly (@virtualstatman) and João Paulo Cunha at Forix for their help in compiling these stats.

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Fernando Alonso's remarkable F1 career in numbers

The topline numbers

Rolling back the years

Going the distance

Around the world

Head-to-head

At the races

Motorsport royalty

The magic number

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