Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso Díaz (; born 29 July 1981) is a Spanish racing driver, currently competing in Formula One for Aston Martin. Alonso has won two Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won in and with Renault, and has won Grands Prix across 21 seasons. In endurance racing, Alonso won the 2018–19 FIA World Endurance Championship and is a two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Toyota, and remains the only driver to have won both the World Drivers' Championship and the World Endurance/Sportscar Championship; he also won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2019 with WTR.

Born in Oviedo, Asturias to a working-class family, Alonso began kart racing aged three and achieved success in local, national, and world championships. He progressed to junior formulae aged 17, winning the Euro Open by Nissan in 1999 and was fourth in the International Formula 3000 Championship of 2000. He debuted in Formula One with Minardi in before joining Renault as a test driver for . Promoted to a race seat in , Alonso won two drivers' championships in 2005 and 2006, becoming the youngest pole-sitter, youngest race winner, youngest world champion, and youngest two-time champion in the sport's history at the time. After finishing just one point behind eventual champion Kimi Räikkönen with McLaren in , he returned to Renault for and and won two races in the former year for fifth overall. Alonso drove for Ferrari from to , finishing runner-up to Sebastian Vettel in 2010, , and with the title battles in 2010 and 2012 going down to the last race of the season. A second stint with McLaren (this time with Honda engines) from to resulted in no further success. Alonso retired from Formula One at the end of 2018, but would return to the sport in with the newly organized Alpine F1 Team. At the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix, Alonso scored his first podium in seven years. At the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix, he broke the record for most starts in Formula One. Alonso moved to Aston Martin for the 2023 season, where he saw great success at the beginning of the season, with six podium finishes in the first eight races. At the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Alonso scored his 100th podium by finishing third, becoming one of six drivers in the series' history to achieve that feat.

As of the , Alonso has achieved race wins, pole positions, fastest laps and podiums in Formula One. Alonso won the 2001 Race of Champions Nations Cup with the rally driver Jesús Puras and the motorcyclist Rubén Xaus for Team Spain and thrice entered the Indianapolis 500 in 2017, 2019 and 2020. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports, the Premios Nacionales del Deporte Sportsman of the Year Award and the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sports Merit and has twice been inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame. Alonso runs an esports and junior racing team and is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Provided by Wikipedia