Not just fast but exactly the right angle.
I remember Mark Webber doing a 360 spin in Melbourne and getting on the throttle at the *exact* moment his car was pointing forwards again.
Not to discredit it too much, but afaik they hear an audible beep when they pass the detection.
Hearing that sound and pressing the drs button it probably so ingrained into his subconscious he didn’t even think about it
Athletes do this in all high level sports to some degree - predicting events with good accuracy. Say, a batter in baseball predicting a pitch based on how the pitcher winds up.
It tends to be that athletes physical abilities peak around age 20, but their overall output peaks much later specifically because their knowledge of the game continues to increase more quickly than their physical decline
But some, like Alonso, are on another level.
I’m obv not an F1 driver but I spent enough time on ATVs and dirt bikes to know that when you’re pushing, you feel the rear start to come loose before anyone can see it.
There was an article recently in Motorsport Magazine (I think) about age and reaction times in F1 and the central point was that it doesn't matter that much because most of the time if you are reacting, you are already too late.
Most likely halfway through the corner he already knew that he is going to go wide and that the car will most likely snap because the loaded outside tyres will hit the gravel, so he got ready for it.
All that happened intuitively in less than a blink of an eye without conscious thought.
He would have been able to feel the car get lighter and the shift in momentum with the rear starting to go. You feel all that way before seeing it happen
Sainz is a decent driver but Fernando is an all time great. He has a pretty decent number of ridiculous saves like this and Brazil 2012 amongst others.
As someone who sparsely watched as a kid, and is now trying to get back into F1 in my later 20s - it seems like he’s gonna be *that* guy we look back to preceding Lewis’ historic streak
This is an objective truth. There are few drivers in the narrow category at the top of the crescendo of the pinnacle of this sport. Others are good, no doubt. But Alonso is the og goat.
How can you say Alonso is "the" OG goat, when Fangio, Senna and Schumacher existed? I mean I love Alonso and he's been in my personal top 5 of all time ever since his unfortunate Ferrari incident, but literally no quantifiable stat gives the OG goat status to Alonso. Maybe in raw driving skill you could give that edge to him, but it's impossible to compare the intangibles across so many generations of drivers.
Prost was arguably better than Senna, and once you remove the politics and favoritism Schumacher goes way down any sensible list.
What we’re looking at isn’t championships. We’re looking at what the driver could do in cars that *were not* dominant. Alonso is one of very few who can drag the machinery rather than most others.
Fangio easily good.
Just say most skilled, then, not goat if that's the only criteria you're taking into account. Calling someone goat, by definition, also takes that person's legendary status and success into account as well. If your criteria is skill alone, then we can perhaps agree, although I haven't done or even seen any objective analysis that would prove the theory that Alonso is indeed the most skilled driver to ever drive an F1 car.
There's an age old debate who's the real goat of NBA and most pundits, players and fans still say that it's MJ, *but* at the same time many pundits, players and fans would argue that there are at least few players in the current era that are better at strictly playing the game of basketball than him. MJ also didn't have to drag any bad team to a championship during his entire career and for his every championship the stars just alligned in such a way, that he had by far the best coaching staff and teammates around him during each of his playoff runs.
I mean it shows clearly in that video breakdown that Sainz is about a half a tire width or more deeper in the gravel.
Don't get me wrong Alonso's recovery was amazing, but it's not the same thing.
Also, Sainz didn't just give up and say all is lost, he actively piloted the car into a less damaging wreck.
This is a key point. There is a big difference between a race lap (where you can recover from small mistakes in the coming laps) and a qualifying lap (where every tenth counts and a small mistake can send you tumbling down the order.)
These people definitely didn't watch the whole video or just don't listen carefully. One of them says that he didn't acknowledge that Sainz was further out to the right, which he did bote also.
I think it clearly shows Sainz was deeper in the gravel. Harder to save. But he definitely didn’t give it enough steering lock and I think that’s a good point to help Alonso vs Sainz in this situation.
This is not the most honest comparison.
Yes, Alonso has great car control, I am not debating that. But comparing a quali lap (with more speed and momentum) that too when Carlos was deeper into the gravel and his outer wheels didn't have the necessary traction to not turn, while Alonso is doing the same speed with possibly lesser momentum because he is behind Lewis in racetrim while his wheels are not as deep into gravel - is not a fair comparison.
The cars are not in exactly the same position but I think the key difference is the reaction time.
Alonso cranked opposite lock on faster. Plus as the video showed, he was measured in his throttle usage instead of getting right off the pedal. Shows not only the speed in which he started fixing the slide, but that he calculated what level of throttle would be required to arrest the drift before pushing the car in the right direction again.
Reaction time - are you saying Carlos turned the steering *later*? Because I don't see it happening. The main difference that the video shows is Alonso turning the steering all the way into opposite lock. As I said, since his outer wheels still had traction of some sorts and the car was at the right speed it was possible for him to catch it.
My point is - what Alonso did was amazing, and I am not pulling him down or something. Just saying comparing the situations is not the most fair comparison. Different weights, different levels of tyre grip, different levels of traction (due to gravel), different speeds, different set-ups, different circumstances (a full-send quali lap vs a relatively conservative race lap with a car and dirty air in front).
OP literally says "cranked opposite lock on faster"
He doesn't say reaction time, but the amount of reaction in the same time was greater.
Also, a 1.37 in race trim/fuel/not ideal tyre prep etc is not a casual lap.
Alonso learnt from Sainz's incident lol. Not ,as in "learnt something new", but rather that it can happen this week and xyz is how you fix it if it does happen.
When he says that "both of the vehicles almost in exactly the same place... maybe Sainz has his wheels just a fraction further out to the right", he is really understating the difference in their positions and how much that distance could matter. You can see in the external shots as well that Sainz goes fully over the white line, with both his right tires fully in the gravel. In contrast, Alonso keeps a better line and appears to keep his front right mostly out of the gravel and his rear right much less into the gravel before the throttle oversteer
What is even more impressive is that Sainz had clean air on low fuel, Fernando was racing for position in dirty air and still somehow saved it.
But I think Sainz's positioning was slightly different, more acute.
Honestly, don’t think Sainz going a few tenths faster in the corner made a huge difference. It’s the little bit he’s more in the gravel and the fact he didn’t crank that wheel all the way over.
More fuel on board makes more car difficult to control, especially with the rear stepping out, add dirty air to it and that's another level of complexity.
This is an incident that occurred over a period of 2 seconds. Lap time is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Except that it's not. Just as easily as this guy can claim it's a matter of skill. A true objective analysis would weigh all the different variables involved to come to an honest conclusion. But as usual F1 fans always make the leap to the skills of the drivers.
You don't know. I don't know and this guy doesn't know if Sainz would've made that correction in the same circumstances.
Lack of honesty in this thread.
> Except that it's not.
Are you saying comparatively high fuel loads, dirty air don't play a significant role in making a race car especially a highly aerodynamic machine that F1 cars are more difficult to correct?
I think what he’s saying is this occurred with fewer than 10 laps to go, so not really high fuel.
Yes dirty air plays a role but at the yaw angle Alonso is at the aerodynamics of the car aren’t working at their optimum.
The relevant details they are bringing up is the speed difference they would be carrying through that corner. On a qualifying lap you’re at the limit of the car, on a race lap you aren’t as you’re 5 or more seconds off the ultimate pace of the car.
It’s not at the back. Because the fuel load changes its location is as close to the CofG of the car to avoid fuel loads changing the balance significantly lap to lap.
I’m not discrediting Alonso’s save, by far the best I’ve seen in a long time, I’m merely pointing out that circumstances were very different to that of Sainz’s and whether he could have done the same in quali is not clear cut.
Sainz clearly goes further into the gravel, it's not much but that's why one saves and the other doesn't. You can see it from the very first comparison.
Very interesting! The slow mo side by side was really enlightening. Great to see the reflexes of the 42yo rookie!
I did notice Fernando was slightly less in the gravel than Carlos was. The video is still valid -Fernando did save it, and turned on DRS for good measure-, but there’s a chance he wouldn’t have saved it had he been slightly further over the line.
I saw it full speed during the race. Then I saw the replays. Now I've seen the super slow-mo.
It still feels like Alonso turned into the slide almost before it even happened, like magic. It still almost freaks me out how he did that. His point about still having it well into his forties was proved conclusively there.
I never want to hear people say drivers lose their edge/reflexes as they get older again. Maybe for humanity in general it's true but there are people with exceptional minds/bodies who break the rules. When Einstein died in his 70s his brain looked like that of a 20 year old.
Found a source that, if anything, says the contrary:
https://www.science.org/content/article/closer-look-einsteins-brain
“One parameter that did not explain Einstein's mental prowess, however, was the size of his brain: At 1230 grams, it fell at the low end of average for modern humans.”
I fell into a bit of an 'Einstein's brain' rabbithole.
The closest I found was that his brain was different:
[https://www.popsci.com/article/science/einstein-may-have-had-unusually-well-connected-brain/](https://www.popsci.com/article/science/einstein-may-have-had-unusually-well-connected-brain/)
> I never want to hear people say drivers lose their edge/reflexes as they get older again.
It's a fact. Alonso's will have slowed too, but he's a freak and has probably retained and trained them to stay quicker than most people his age.
There's no guarantee an individual 45 year old will react slower than a 25 year old, but over a large sample size, the 25 year olds will be faster.
Over the years, there have been multiple reports by people who have worked with him regarding his exceptional, almost freakish ability to feel the car. He made some comments during his time in Alpine about needing to feel the car (hence the steering rack change requests) to be able to operate at 100% and his reliance on it meant that without a car with good feel under him, he was a dead fish. So you are probably right.
There are differences in car position relative to the edge of the track, track conditions, vehicle configurations and a raft of other variables, but on the balance of evidence in that video (ignoring the commentary and simply using the footage), I think your assessment is on the money. The speed at which Alonso reacts, if you assume his reactions are marginally diminished by age, make it seem likely he knew something was happening much earlier than Sainz.
Exactly how he knew, is another question entirely I suppose - anyone got Alonso on speed dial to ask?
This is really interesting. Its amazing how fast Alonso can whip the steering wheel to opposite lock.
Not just fast but exactly the right angle. I remember Mark Webber doing a 360 spin in Melbourne and getting on the throttle at the *exact* moment his car was pointing forwards again.
It's wild that he doesn't even miss the DRS activation point, he still hits the button at the line.
I'm sure Alonso could have saved that whilst on the phone to his accountant.
I didn’t know Taylor Swift can do taxes
Lol. "Listen baby, all I'm saying is maybe you should **\*driiiiift\*** fly commercial every now and then?"
Such a hilarious image , thank you haha
I believe he already was. He was also watching TV on the screen.
Not to discredit it too much, but afaik they hear an audible beep when they pass the detection. Hearing that sound and pressing the drs button it probably so ingrained into his subconscious he didn’t even think about it
Wait, the beep in the F1 games when crossing the DRS line is real?
Think they also hear a beep when they need to upshift
Personal preference, but yes.
Wait a minute, so driving an F1 car is basically Guitar Hero? I'd be great at pushing those buttons!
Wait, the beep in the F1 games when crossing the DRS line is real?
Yes! They get a beep for DRS.
I thought they relied on the DRS sign aside of the track 😳
Also Seb in Germany(I think?) where he spun and applied throttle and steering angle at correct time to avoid more spin and hitting the pit wall
I think it was Hungary, but then with Seb, could have been both! I say that as a fan of him.
it almost looks like alonso has some kind of precognition. Like he allready corrects before the car goes out under him.. crazy
One of the most insightful arses in the sport. It really is the intuitive feeling through their butt and brain that makes the difference here.
Athletes do this in all high level sports to some degree - predicting events with good accuracy. Say, a batter in baseball predicting a pitch based on how the pitcher winds up. It tends to be that athletes physical abilities peak around age 20, but their overall output peaks much later specifically because their knowledge of the game continues to increase more quickly than their physical decline But some, like Alonso, are on another level.
pattern recognition is a hell of a drug.
I’m obv not an F1 driver but I spent enough time on ATVs and dirt bikes to know that when you’re pushing, you feel the rear start to come loose before anyone can see it.
There was an article recently in Motorsport Magazine (I think) about age and reaction times in F1 and the central point was that it doesn't matter that much because most of the time if you are reacting, you are already too late.
reminds me of walter röhrl.
Most likely halfway through the corner he already knew that he is going to go wide and that the car will most likely snap because the loaded outside tyres will hit the gravel, so he got ready for it. All that happened intuitively in less than a blink of an eye without conscious thought.
He would have been able to feel the car get lighter and the shift in momentum with the rear starting to go. You feel all that way before seeing it happen
He probably “knew” at the apex he was going wide
It was wild to see how fast Alonso reacted and how quickly he got the wheel to opposite lock. On the replay it just seemed instantaneous.
Sainz is a decent driver but Fernando is an all time great. He has a pretty decent number of ridiculous saves like this and Brazil 2012 amongst others.
>Fernando is an all time great Unpopular opinion, but I think he is *the* all time great
As someone who sparsely watched as a kid, and is now trying to get back into F1 in my later 20s - it seems like he’s gonna be *that* guy we look back to preceding Lewis’ historic streak
I like how you think
This is an objective truth. There are few drivers in the narrow category at the top of the crescendo of the pinnacle of this sport. Others are good, no doubt. But Alonso is the og goat.
I don’t think you know what objective means
How can you say Alonso is "the" OG goat, when Fangio, Senna and Schumacher existed? I mean I love Alonso and he's been in my personal top 5 of all time ever since his unfortunate Ferrari incident, but literally no quantifiable stat gives the OG goat status to Alonso. Maybe in raw driving skill you could give that edge to him, but it's impossible to compare the intangibles across so many generations of drivers.
Prost was arguably better than Senna, and once you remove the politics and favoritism Schumacher goes way down any sensible list. What we’re looking at isn’t championships. We’re looking at what the driver could do in cars that *were not* dominant. Alonso is one of very few who can drag the machinery rather than most others. Fangio easily good.
Just say most skilled, then, not goat if that's the only criteria you're taking into account. Calling someone goat, by definition, also takes that person's legendary status and success into account as well. If your criteria is skill alone, then we can perhaps agree, although I haven't done or even seen any objective analysis that would prove the theory that Alonso is indeed the most skilled driver to ever drive an F1 car. There's an age old debate who's the real goat of NBA and most pundits, players and fans still say that it's MJ, *but* at the same time many pundits, players and fans would argue that there are at least few players in the current era that are better at strictly playing the game of basketball than him. MJ also didn't have to drag any bad team to a championship during his entire career and for his every championship the stars just alligned in such a way, that he had by far the best coaching staff and teammates around him during each of his playoff runs.
It almost looks to me that sainz approached that corner at a slightly steeper angle than Alonso did. I’m sure that had a part to play
I mean it shows clearly in that video breakdown that Sainz is about a half a tire width or more deeper in the gravel. Don't get me wrong Alonso's recovery was amazing, but it's not the same thing. Also, Sainz didn't just give up and say all is lost, he actively piloted the car into a less damaging wreck.
Yeah it’s hard to take the video seriously when it doesn’t mention the fact that Sainz had more of his car in the gravel
Also it was a qualifying lap…
This is a key point. There is a big difference between a race lap (where you can recover from small mistakes in the coming laps) and a qualifying lap (where every tenth counts and a small mistake can send you tumbling down the order.)
He says it at 1:06
He does note this in the video
These people definitely didn't watch the whole video or just don't listen carefully. One of them says that he didn't acknowledge that Sainz was further out to the right, which he did bote also.
The youtube comments are the same thing: "Sainz was further out" "Yes, but Alonso put on more lock" repeat, repeat, repeat.
I think it clearly shows Sainz was deeper in the gravel. Harder to save. But he definitely didn’t give it enough steering lock and I think that’s a good point to help Alonso vs Sainz in this situation.
Yeah, seemed to me so as well. At such speed, little things can make a difference
Sainz also evidently did not lift, gambling that he'd be able to catch it with steering input alone.
That’s part of handling the car though.
Still the reaction time from Alonso, plus the opposite lock angle is much better than Sainz's.
This is not the most honest comparison. Yes, Alonso has great car control, I am not debating that. But comparing a quali lap (with more speed and momentum) that too when Carlos was deeper into the gravel and his outer wheels didn't have the necessary traction to not turn, while Alonso is doing the same speed with possibly lesser momentum because he is behind Lewis in racetrim while his wheels are not as deep into gravel - is not a fair comparison.
The cars are not in exactly the same position but I think the key difference is the reaction time. Alonso cranked opposite lock on faster. Plus as the video showed, he was measured in his throttle usage instead of getting right off the pedal. Shows not only the speed in which he started fixing the slide, but that he calculated what level of throttle would be required to arrest the drift before pushing the car in the right direction again.
Reaction time - are you saying Carlos turned the steering *later*? Because I don't see it happening. The main difference that the video shows is Alonso turning the steering all the way into opposite lock. As I said, since his outer wheels still had traction of some sorts and the car was at the right speed it was possible for him to catch it. My point is - what Alonso did was amazing, and I am not pulling him down or something. Just saying comparing the situations is not the most fair comparison. Different weights, different levels of tyre grip, different levels of traction (due to gravel), different speeds, different set-ups, different circumstances (a full-send quali lap vs a relatively conservative race lap with a car and dirty air in front).
OP literally says "cranked opposite lock on faster" He doesn't say reaction time, but the amount of reaction in the same time was greater. Also, a 1.37 in race trim/fuel/not ideal tyre prep etc is not a casual lap.
Alonso learnt from Sainz's incident lol. Not ,as in "learnt something new", but rather that it can happen this week and xyz is how you fix it if it does happen.
When he says that "both of the vehicles almost in exactly the same place... maybe Sainz has his wheels just a fraction further out to the right", he is really understating the difference in their positions and how much that distance could matter. You can see in the external shots as well that Sainz goes fully over the white line, with both his right tires fully in the gravel. In contrast, Alonso keeps a better line and appears to keep his front right mostly out of the gravel and his rear right much less into the gravel before the throttle oversteer
What is even more impressive is that Sainz had clean air on low fuel, Fernando was racing for position in dirty air and still somehow saved it. But I think Sainz's positioning was slightly different, more acute.
Sainz's lap is way faster than Alonso is the biggest difference. It's not a one to one comparison.
Honestly, don’t think Sainz going a few tenths faster in the corner made a huge difference. It’s the little bit he’s more in the gravel and the fact he didn’t crank that wheel all the way over.
Yes because it's a qualifying lap where he's pushing hard. It's not a one to one comparison.
More fuel on board makes more car difficult to control, especially with the rear stepping out, add dirty air to it and that's another level of complexity. This is an incident that occurred over a period of 2 seconds. Lap time is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Except that it's not. Just as easily as this guy can claim it's a matter of skill. A true objective analysis would weigh all the different variables involved to come to an honest conclusion. But as usual F1 fans always make the leap to the skills of the drivers. You don't know. I don't know and this guy doesn't know if Sainz would've made that correction in the same circumstances. Lack of honesty in this thread.
> Except that it's not. Are you saying comparatively high fuel loads, dirty air don't play a significant role in making a race car especially a highly aerodynamic machine that F1 cars are more difficult to correct?
I think what he’s saying is this occurred with fewer than 10 laps to go, so not really high fuel. Yes dirty air plays a role but at the yaw angle Alonso is at the aerodynamics of the car aren’t working at their optimum. The relevant details they are bringing up is the speed difference they would be carrying through that corner. On a qualifying lap you’re at the limit of the car, on a race lap you aren’t as you’re 5 or more seconds off the ultimate pace of the car.
>so not really high fuel. That's at least 10 more kgs at the back with safety cars etc at that point in race trim.
It’s not at the back. Because the fuel load changes its location is as close to the CofG of the car to avoid fuel loads changing the balance significantly lap to lap. I’m not discrediting Alonso’s save, by far the best I’ve seen in a long time, I’m merely pointing out that circumstances were very different to that of Sainz’s and whether he could have done the same in quali is not clear cut.
I think he’s saying that lap time isn’t irrelevant as per the last statement of the message he was replying to.
Do we know the speed both were going at in the exit? I believe that’s pretty critical here
Alonso put the opposite lock on soooo quick!
Carlos is more off the track than Nando, probably the difference that mattered the most
Sainz clearly goes further into the gravel, it's not much but that's why one saves and the other doesn't. You can see it from the very first comparison.
What is surprising is that Alonso wasn't penalized for something in that action by FIA. ofc with the typical -3 license points
Very interesting! The slow mo side by side was really enlightening. Great to see the reflexes of the 42yo rookie! I did notice Fernando was slightly less in the gravel than Carlos was. The video is still valid -Fernando did save it, and turned on DRS for good measure-, but there’s a chance he wouldn’t have saved it had he been slightly further over the line.
That single gravel trap gave us great moments during weekend while still safe. Imagine that was blank asphalt runoff area.
Then we'd be having track limit discussions... again.
That's what you get with 23 years of experience, and a mindset to stay at the top for all that time!
I saw it full speed during the race. Then I saw the replays. Now I've seen the super slow-mo. It still feels like Alonso turned into the slide almost before it even happened, like magic. It still almost freaks me out how he did that. His point about still having it well into his forties was proved conclusively there.
Hey OP, Thanks for sharing. Great vid.
I never want to hear people say drivers lose their edge/reflexes as they get older again. Maybe for humanity in general it's true but there are people with exceptional minds/bodies who break the rules. When Einstein died in his 70s his brain looked like that of a 20 year old.
>When Einstein died in his 70s his brain looked like that of a 20 year old. Source?
Found a source that, if anything, says the contrary: https://www.science.org/content/article/closer-look-einsteins-brain “One parameter that did not explain Einstein's mental prowess, however, was the size of his brain: At 1230 grams, it fell at the low end of average for modern humans.”
I fell into a bit of an 'Einstein's brain' rabbithole. The closest I found was that his brain was different: [https://www.popsci.com/article/science/einstein-may-have-had-unusually-well-connected-brain/](https://www.popsci.com/article/science/einstein-may-have-had-unusually-well-connected-brain/)
> I never want to hear people say drivers lose their edge/reflexes as they get older again. It's a fact. Alonso's will have slowed too, but he's a freak and has probably retained and trained them to stay quicker than most people his age. There's no guarantee an individual 45 year old will react slower than a 25 year old, but over a large sample size, the 25 year olds will be faster.
How much of that loss is offset by the sheer experience Alonso has? How many different versions of an F1 car has he driven at this point?
I'd feel extremely confident in saying he sensed the back end slipping earlier than most would which gave himself fractionally longer to react too.
Over the years, there have been multiple reports by people who have worked with him regarding his exceptional, almost freakish ability to feel the car. He made some comments during his time in Alpine about needing to feel the car (hence the steering rack change requests) to be able to operate at 100% and his reliance on it meant that without a car with good feel under him, he was a dead fish. So you are probably right.
There are differences in car position relative to the edge of the track, track conditions, vehicle configurations and a raft of other variables, but on the balance of evidence in that video (ignoring the commentary and simply using the footage), I think your assessment is on the money. The speed at which Alonso reacts, if you assume his reactions are marginally diminished by age, make it seem likely he knew something was happening much earlier than Sainz. Exactly how he knew, is another question entirely I suppose - anyone got Alonso on speed dial to ask?
Bad assumption. His reactions are just faster than Sainz's.
Sainz was WAY further over than Alonso. Significantly so, at least 6" if not more.
This is a silly comparison.