Four F1 champions to inspire Alonso

All true. But this is hardly the end of a career – and of course he might not necessarily be done with F1, despite being 37. He has a lot of racing miles left in him yet: the question is, in what type of racing car?

The smart money is on a full McLaren IndyCar campaign, as Alonso not only works towards completing his triple crown by adding the Indy 500 to his Monaco GP and Le Mans 24 Hours glories, but also takes on a complete season in the premier US single-seater series.

Alonso at Mid-Ohio, Long Beach, Road America, Portland, Sears Point… that’s very cool. One of the greatest racers in history taking on big, hairy American road courses, most of which would be considered too old-fashioned – and too downright dangerous – for F1. Tasty.

Winning the Indy 500 would, of course, be amazing. He’d double the triple-crown club in one fell swoop, given that only Graham Hill has achieved the feat. But if he wins a major international championship, too, he’d be treading on to another special path.

A number of F1 champions have won races in other arenas after their F1 careers – Keke Rosberg and Mika Häkkinen in DTM spring to mind – but few have won hard-fought season-long titles.

As it stands, Alonso could be on course to win not one, but two next year. Despite losing his third consecutive World Endurance Championship victory with Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi in the Toyota TS050 at Silverstone on Sunday, he is in the hunt for a sportscar world title, one that won’t be decided until after Le Mans next year thanks to the series’ novel super-season format. Imagine if he does indeed win it, then clinches an Indycar crown too a few months later. His great all-rounder mission will surely be complete.

The feat would allow him to stand proudly beside the following drivers – and in all truth, above at least a couple of them.

Emerson Fittipaldi

Comparisons between Alonso and the Brazilian are inevitable. Both are double F1 world champions, and both won their titles young before their careers drifted into disappointment. Although it must be said, Fittipaldi’s fall was harder, faster and more extreme.

After his crowns in 1972 with Lotus and 1974 with McLaren, ‘Emmo’ consciously walked away from a championship-winning car and team to chase the all-Brazilian Fittipaldi dream with his brother Wilson. He never won another F1 race, and quit after five largely dispiriting seasons, his titles a long-distant memory. Alonso at least came oh-so-close to titles with McLaren, in 2007, and Ferrari, in 2010 and ’12.

But Fittipaldi’s reputation was saved by his second career. In the 1980s, he rediscovered his mojo in Indycars, winning what was then known as the PPG Cup in 1989 with Patrick Racing, along with a pair of Indy 500s: one in his title year and another with Team Penske in ’93.

Only injury after a big shunt at the fearsome Michigan superspeedway in 1996 forced him to retire, at close to 50. Memories of the miserable Copersucar/Fittipaldi years were long-banished by then. Instead, Fittipaldi would be remembered as a formidable competitor in not one, but two codes of racing – over three colourful decades.

Mario Andretti

Even when he clinched his F1 title with Lotus in 1978, Mario Andretti was already too accomplished in other arenas to let that success define him. Bred in sprint cars on dirt ovals, he won three USAC Indycar titles in his 20s (1965, ’66 and ’69) and the Indy 500 in the final year of the 1960s, along with the Daytona 500 in ’67. He was also, lest we forget, a mighty force in sportscars with Ford and Ferrari.

F1? He longed to conquer it because European Grand Prix racing was in his blood following his Italian Ascari-worshipping 1950s upbringing. But it was never everything to him. Like Alonso this year, he regularly switched between codes, flitting from F1 Grands Prix to Indycar races – even in his championship year.

But if anything, his career post-F1 – as a maturing veteran in the 1980s – is the most impressive facet of his racing life. How he won only a single Indycar title under its CART guise, for Newman-Haas in 1984, is an Alonso-like head-scratcher.

And somehow, he never won another Indy 500, as the ‘Andretti curse’ became established in racing folklore.

It’s no surprise that Andretti loves and appreciates what Alonso’s trying to do right now. He set the standard – over four incredible decades.

Alain Prost

The four-time F1 champion makes this list, although in truth his post-Grand Prix title success was hardly in an arena as tough as Indycar.

But his three Andros Trophies and 38 race wins in Europe’s tin-top ice racing circus does deserve our recognition and respect: dancing on ice couldn’t be more removed from his days waltzing around Monaco.

That quiet, undemonstrative manner always belied a fiercely competitive nature, and Prost showed those old instincts were still alive deep into the 2000s – even if they were in a Toyota Auris and Dacia Lodgy Glace.

Nigel Mansell

Finally, Il Leone. How Britain’s hero finally conquered F1 with the majestic Williams FW14B in 1992, then flounced to America rather than face nemesis Prost in the same team for a second time, is the stuff of Mansell’s flawed legend.

But whatever holes his critics like to pick, no one can ever take away Mansell’s defining achievement: to leave F1 as reigning champion and conquer the Indycar series at the first attempt in ’93. Sure, his Newman-Haas/Lola/Ford Cosworth package was supreme, but he beat team-mate Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi in a Penske, Bobby Rahal, Al Unser Jr and the rest, during what was arguably Indycar’s most competitive era… That was monumental.

So can Alonso pull of something similar? Of course he can.

As ever, the headstrong Spaniard is going his own way. But if he looks close enough, the path he is treading has some familiar – and pretty special – footsteps to inspire him./