14/06/2018
NEWS STORY
Those back-to-back title in 2005 and 2006 seem a lifetime ago, and in terms of an F1 drivers career in many ways they were.
And while fans and many within the sport ponder whether Fernando Alonso will remain in F1 in 2019 for an eighteenth season or head to IndyCar or WEC, the Spaniard claims it is not having a title-winning or race-winning car that will help him make his decision but rather the direction he feels the sport is taking.
Currently joint eighth in the driver standings, courtesy of a string of points finishes, yet none of them higher than fifth, when asked how much longer he could continue knowing he was not in a position to fight for wins, the Spaniard replied: "I think it has been up and down...
"I think the last possibility of the last championship car we had was 2007," he continued, according to ESPN. "The rest has been always quite far off from the performance of the top and the winning team of that season.
"We're now eleven years after that moment, so I don't think it's a problem," he added, "but I think the biggest thing for me is to think about the direction Formula One is going and I don't think too much about how competitive we'll be next year as it is impossible to predict. It is just about the sport.
"When you see again the grid in Canada there were two Mercedes, two Ferraris, two Red Bulls, two Force Indias and two Renaults in Q3. It is a constructors' world championship and not a drivers' world championship so it is something I need to decide."
Asked if those two titles were enough to prove his talent, he replied: "No not really I think there are opportunities missed in the past, and we could have won probably four or five championships by I think seven points one time, and then three or something like that.
"But at the same time I feel extremely privileged to have these 18 years in F1 and I know there are drivers here that I race against, I see them on the track, I see their talent, I see their previous categories, and they've never even reached a podium.
"I see my teammate now, I see Nico, I see Carlos. I see a lot of talented drivers that they didn't score a podium. At the same time, we missed some opportunities as I said but I'm happy with the things that I've done."