Alonso struck again by landmark ‘curse’ in Mexican GP

Fernando Alonso was struck again by a landmark ‘curse’ after retiring from his 400th grand prix entry in Mexico City. 

Alonso became F1’s first quadruple centurion in Mexico with his 400th entry and 397th start, with the 2001 Belgian, 2005 United States and 2017 Russian Grands Prix missing from his record.

He is scheduled to hit 400 F1 starts in Qatar.

Starting 13th on the grid, Alonso was the third retirement from the race with a brakes issue after Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda collided at Turn 1 on the opening lap. 

The DNF marked yet another Alonso retirement in a landmark race – after failing to finish in his 200th, 300th and now 400th entries. 

“By lap 13 or something, the temperatures were a little bit unsafe,” he reflected to media including RacingNews365.

“So we took some actions on the steering wheel to protect the temperatures, but then they told me that there was some debris or a tear-off in the brakes, so it was destiny not to finish the race.”

Below, RacingNews365 takes a look at Alonso’s landmark ‘curse.’

Alonso’s landmark curse

Alonso’s 200th race entry was the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix for Ferrari – the infamous multi-21 race involving Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

Whilst the ending overshadows the race, it actually started in wet conditions, with Alonso third on the grid behind Vettel and team-mate Felipe Massa.

On the opening lap through the Turns 1 and 2 section, Alonso tagged the rear of Vettel’s car, breaking his front-wing, and although it didn’t fail immediately, it did run askew, but he did not pit.

Going down the pit-straight to start lap 2, the wing did fail, as Alonso skated into the gravel and into retirement. 

Fast forward five years, and by the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix, Alonso was back at McLaren, and growing rather frustrated by a lack of progress with Renault power units as the team discovered it was not just Honda at fault during the doomed 2015-17 partnership.

Alonso qualified for his 300th entry in 14th place and then promptly retired with an exhaust issue. He would leave F1 at the end of the year after 314 entries, only to be enticed back by Alpine in 2021.

In case you were wondering, Alonso’s first entry at the 2001 Australian GP ended with a 12th place finish for Minardi – and his 100th was a run to third from fourth on the grid at the 2007 Turkish GP in his first McLaren spell.