Formula One: Fernando Alonso in 2018 championship contention?

With McLaren switching from Honda to Renault engines in the 2018 Formula One season, will two-time champion Fernando Alonso be in championship contention once again?

Fernando Alonso, 36, is a two-time champion of Formula One, but he has struggled mightily in the past three seasons in his second, third and fourth seasons driving for McLaren over the course of his 16-year career in the sport.

The struggles that Alonso has experienced have largely been due to the fact that McLaren uses Honda engines, which have been without a doubt the least reliable and least powerful engines in the sport as of late.

In 56 starts as McLaren driver since he returned to the team in the 2015 season, the 32-time Formula One race winner has finished no higher than 5th place in a single race, which he has done three times. He has finished just 34 of those 56 races, retiring in the other 22, which is not something that you would expect from the driver who sits 6th on the all-time Formula One wins list.

With the Honda engines being so unreliable and lacking a lot of power, there was speculation that Alonso would leave McLaren and perhaps Formula One as a whole next season if nothing was done about the issue by the team. But something was done, and that something was the announcement that Renault engines will power the McLaren cars in the 2018 season as opposed to Honda engines. Alonso then re-signed with the team a few weeks later.

Will this engine change be enough to make the two-time Formula One champion a championship contender once again?

Fernando Alonso in 2018 championship contention: SELL

It seems pretty clear that Fernando Alonso will have much more success in the 2018 Formula One season than he has had over the past three seasons driving for McLaren in a Honda-powered car. However, to say he will be a championship contender is a bit of a stretch.

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Sure, McLaren has still had a solid aerodynamic package as of late. But an engine change from Honda to Renault isn’t going to solve all of their problems overnight. The team isn’t going to, or at least shouldn’t, suddenly jump up to Mercedes’ level just because of an engine manufacturer switch. And Renault has recently had engine issues of their own as well.

Formula One’s chairman emeritus Bernie Ecclestone thinks McLaren will ultimately end up disappointed after a while anyway even with their switch from Honda engines to Renault engines.

"“The Renault deal is all done. [Fernando] Alonso staying is super news…But I can’t see why McLaren will be any happier with Renault than they are with Honda. It wasn’t Honda’s fault things didn’t work out, it was McLaren’s. Every day they had a fight about everything, instead of working with them, which was a little bit stupid.”"

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Plus, Fernando Alonso hasn’t won a championship since the 2006 season when he was driving for Renault, and he hasn’t even won a race since the 2013 season. Yes, he has been driving a Honda-powered McLaren car for the last three seasons, which has a lot to do with that fact, but he didn’t win a single race in his final season driving for Scuderia Ferrari in 2014 either after four seasons during which he combined for 11 victories with the team. He may simply be past his prime, so it is highly unlikely that he will be a championship contender in the 2018 season.

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