Fernando Alonso: The Real Pain of Losing

**Fernando Alonso** (0:02)
I won the championship in Brazil in 2005 and 2006, and I hardly remember anything from those afternoons and nights, which is sad. There is only one way to see the checkered flag faster. Executing the race as a robot, it is extremely painful when you remove the helmet and you are not on the podium, and you see others celebrating, and it is something that you cannot digest sometimes in a few hours.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:32)
Every driver who has ever sat on a Formula One grid will tell you about fear.
Fernando Alonso, however, will tell you he doesn't really have any. Two World Championships, 32 Grand Prix wins from 360 starts, which means by his own count, he has lost 90% of the races that he has ever started. And over 40 years old, he still believes he is the best driver he has ever been. When he sat down with us for a conversation, Fernando lifted the visor metaphorically for what might just be the most honest conversation he has ever given, discussing the importance of failure, reflection and the discipline to grow. He told us he can barely remember winning the World Championships and has no real memory of the podiums or the celebrations because by the time the race was over and he had landed back home, he was already texting his engineer about the next weekend. He also told us about a go-kart mechanic who pulled him aside at 13 years old after the best result of his life and told him second is first loser. What's really striking though about this conversation is that Fernando isn't here to burnish his legend, he's here to perform a clinical debrief on his own life. He speaks with the same technical detachment that he uses in the cockpit, weighing the unlimited search for perfection against the humor moments he was simply too busy to actually experience. So together, let's welcome to High Performance Fernando Alonso.
Thank you very much for joining us.

**Fernando Alonso** (1:57)
Thank you.

**Jake Humphrey** (1:58)
So, when I say high performance, what do you think of?

**Fernando Alonso** (2:04)
I think many, many things. First of all, Formula One, because it's the expression of high performance in motorsport. But for me, it's maybe delivering higher than expectations and having that extra something on everything you do.
And that probably for me means high performance.

**Jake Humphrey** (2:25)
You see, everyone dreams of delivering a little bit extra, a little bit more. How do you go about finding that little bit extra?

**Fernando Alonso** (2:35)
Well, I think we all try to give that a little bit extra. As you said, it's something that we all try to achieve.
But it's a little bit relative. And especially in sport, you have the comparison with your main competitors. So it's doing that little extra compared to them and finding the best version of yourself, which is an unlimited probably search, because every day there is something that you can learn and you can improve. So it is a difficult task, but it's something that you pursue in life and in sport as well.

**Damian Hughes** (3:16)
So, Fernando, you started your driving career at the tender age of three.

**Fernando Alonso** (3:20)
Yeah.

**Damian Hughes** (3:21)
Tell us a little bit about your family, because I'm interested in your family's motivation to allow you to get behind the wheel of a go-kart at such a young age.

**Fernando Alonso** (3:30)
Yeah, my first race was at the age of three, which at the moment right now is not legal anymore. I think the driver license for go-kart started at eight now, so that's good to don't have kids at three years old behind a wheel. But back then, my father was a go-kart driver, just driving around my region, never on a national level or not international for sure. And yeah, more for fun than anything else, created a small go-kart, handmade, for my sister, that is five years older than me. So my sister was eight. My sister didn't like the go-kart on that first couple of days that my father tried. And then, yeah, eventually he put me in the go-kart and I like it. And yeah, as I said, I did my first race at the age of three.
It was a street circuit. I don't remember anything of course, but I have the videos and the photos of that day. And I think the race was 15 laps and I did two of them. So I got lapped at 13 times and in 15
But yeah, they told me that I won the race. So I was happy after all. And yeah, that's how I started.