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The 2023 F1 season was nothing short of a pleasant surprise for Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard had moved from Alpine to Aston Martin with hopes of seeing an improvement in his results. His stay at the French team has been strong and he had re-established himself as one of the top drivers in F1 but the car was just a midfield contender at best.
Moving to Aston Martin was supposed to be a new chapter, especially with the team having made so much infrastructural investment over the last few years. Despite all of that, it was going to take a brave man to predict what would happen in 2023.
Out of nowhere, it was Aston Martin that jumped through the pecking order and became the second-fastest car at the start of the season. Although Alonso started the season with a podium in Bahrain, even he would not have predicted a podium in his very first race for the team.
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Well, it did happen and from that point onwards, the team and the driver had a very successful season. The car could not keep its competitiveness beyond the first half of the season but at the end of the year, Alonso and Aston Martin would be very happy with how the season transpired.
In a season where Fernando Alonso once again became a frontrunner, what were his top three races? Let's take a look.
Fernando Alonso's top three drives in 2023
#1 Monaco
One could argue that Fernando Alonso's qualifying lap was sensational in Monaco and the car was truly on rails at the time. One could even argue that the Spaniard lost a win due to the strategy employed by the team.
However, there's one thing that no one could argue - Fernando Alonso was blisteringly fast that weekend and he was one of the few drivers who kept his head throughout the race despite there being far too many variables at play.
Even though Alonso could not win the F1 Monaco GP this season, there aren't many who could find faults in the kind of weekend he had put together.
#2 Zandvoort
One of the best facets of the race in Zandvoort this season was that Aston Martin needed that result. The car had been a major struggle for the team as the new upgrades had seemingly made it worse.
Coming out of the summer break, there were question marks around Aston Martin's performance and whether the team had any idea of how it could change the trajectory of its season. The race weekend started positively for the team with Fernando Alonso seemingly more confident in the car and the times not being too far off the top.
However, things did change in qualifying as Mercedes and McLaren revved things up and qualified closer to the front row. Alonso was also in a far more respectable position and what this also did was allow him to be in the hunt.
This is precisely what he did as Sunday posed a plethora of challenges - from rain at the start of the race to dry in the middle and then torrential rain at the end of it - for the Spaniard. What was interesting to watch was that it was Alonso who was always at the top of his game and making the most of these variables.
It was these variables that helped him secure a P2 finish and even beat Sergio Perez. Looking at how Aston Martin fell away once again in the later races it was clear that the driver made the difference that weekend more than the car.
#3 Brazil
One of the more famous podiums of the season came in Sau Paulo where Fernando Alonso held off Sergio Perez after a late-race battle to secure a podium. The Spaniard was not much of a factor in the second half of the season as the car was just not good enough to compete.
The race in Brazil was one of the rare cases where Alonso had a car capable of competing for the podium. Even in that scenario, if Perez had not messed up his qualifying, it would not have been much of a battle.
The fact that Perez had to get through Alonso to get a podium and he was unable to do it made the podium even more memorable. All in all, this was Alonso reminding everyone that with the right car, he would fight at the front of the grid every time.
