Fernando Alonso, the driver who reacted the fastest at the start of Zandvoort at 45 years old

Fernando Alonso he turned a month ago 45 yearsand a week ago, in the F1 Dutch GPwas the fastest driver at the start of the Sunday race in Zandvoort in a grid full of young talents, among which, for example, are Lindblad is 18 years old and Kimi Antonelli is just 20 years old.

Fernando Alonso He already said days before, the Thursday before the race, that “age is not a problem” to continue performing at the highest level and maximizing the performance of his car each weekend, and on Sunday, he demonstrated it again with his response to the starting traffic light, but also with the great execution of his race, taking more care of the tires than the rest to extend his two runs and being the only one who would finish the race with just one stop, something that led him to go from 18th place to 9th place in a race in which overtaking is difficult.

Experts say that the ability to react is one of the first things that gets worse as the years go by. But not for Fernando.

At the start, with the asphalt wet at some point, he once again maximized his opportunities. Aware that he had the worst car on a straight line due to the lack of power from his Honda engine, I knew that at the start I should try to gain some position before trying a more complicated strategy. And he did it with a very good initial reaction in the first meters, the best on the grid.

According to data from the social network account ‘X’ ‘Formula Data Analysis’, Fernando Alonso He was the driver who first reached 200 km/h at the start, the moment at which performance differences between cars matter the least.

The man from Oviedo reached 2.6 100 km/hmatched only by Bearman, with good traction and acceleration. And he was the first to reach 200 km/h, in 4.9 secondsexceeding 5 with what they did Bearman, Gasly and Tsunoda.

Fernando Alonso’s better acceleration could also be due to knowing how to read the track conditions better in the first meters, helped, of course, by a Honda engine with less power, with which perhaps he could make his tires slide less on the asphalt, without losing time.

But in the data provided by the aforementioned account, it can be see how the speed of reaction to the traffic light was key. The man from Oviedo nailed it and that allowed him to have a good start.

“This is not football or the NBA”

“Age is not a problem. We raced in Qatar, I think it was in 2023, and everyone was half dead in the parc ferme, while I was perfectly fine, doing the interviews in the television area”said Fernando Alonso on Thursday before the race, when a journalist asked him how he could be at the highest level of driving despite his age.

“In sports it is said that at a certain age you are at your best and then you have to perform. But this is not football, it is not athletics, it is not the NBA. This is a different animal. There will be someone who will be using 100% of his brain and physical capacity to drive the car, and perhaps Max Verstappen will be using 10%, because he is at another level. So it depends. Age is not a problem. It is simply the motivation, the fun and what remains to be achieved,” said the Spaniard.