Fernando Alonso has explained the key differences he noticed between Ferrari and McLaren during his time with each team. The Spaniard will head into his 19th season in F1 in 2022 with Alpine, and over the course of his career in the sport has raced for four outfits. He admits that every team have their own approach to how they go about things, particularly in the case of McLaren - who he drove for in 2007 before returning for a second stint from 2015 to 2018 - and Ferrari, where he spent five years between 2010 and 2014. "I think each of them has part of the DNA of the team," Alonso told the Beyond The Grid podcast. "Historically, they've been racing with a different philosophy, so each of them are different. In Renault I think you find this family environment and friendly approach, by everyone in Enstone and Paris. "In Ferrari, I think it's a little bit more passionate, what you see there from the people at the factory. A little bit more chaotic, as well, because it's part of maybe the Latin, Italian, Spanish DNA as well. "McLaren is a little bit more serious, a little bit more precise [in] everything, but maybe lacking a little bit of communication internally as well, but a very professional environment. "And yeah, each of them is just a little bit different, but they are all finding the limits and arriving to the same goal, which is producing the fastest cars possible, and they are all extreme on that."
Memories of Minardi
Alonso began his F1 career with Minardi in 2001, where he spent one year before joining Renault. The two-time World Champion thinks that the backmarker team had some similarities to Ferrari in their passion for the sport. "I put it more in the Italian side, it's more like Ferrari," Alonso said. "I think what I found in Minardi in those days was a very passionate group of people about Formula 1, with very little resources at that time, and [it was] quite a changeable environment in the way that, at the beginning of the year, it was Minardi. "Two months before Australia [the opening race of the 2001 season], the team was not racing anymore because the lack of funding and budget, then Paul Stoddart came in, saved the team in the last moment, and we went to Australia with no winter testing. That was the debut. "That probably was unthinkable at that time, and it is unthinkable now, but this was part of the course, this was part of the passion. "The Italian teams, they put on it and probably at that time it was a little bit more normal."
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