“He should be a lawyer” - Alonso’s intelligence praised by F1 legend

Alonso scored his third consecutive podium of F1 2023 at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, finishing third behind Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.

At one point it looked like Alonso’s race was ruined when he was spun around by Carlos Sainz on Lap 57 - when the race restarted following Kevin Magnussen’s shunt.

Alonso demonstrated his quick-thinking over team radio when recovering from his incident: “Stupid rule! How the hell you can put a red flag before?

“Maybe it’s because we don’t complete a lap, we go back to the same positions. It happened in Silverstone.”

Alonso proved to be correct with the Spaniard being reinstated into third at the restart after the FIA couldn’t determine an order, thus reverting back to the one before the final standing start.

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, Hill suggested that Alonso would make a great team boss.

“We were making a joke that he should be a lawyer. I'd get him to defend me in a murder charge!” Hill said.

“It's boring driving the car, he needs something else to do. He's going around going, 'Can I do the strategy as well? Give me more information.'

“He already understands the rules. You'd expect someone who's been in Formula 1 as long as he has and had all the experiences to have learned something, but you can't automatically assume that.

“He's invested in this, he understands it, and he knows, like Michael Schumacher as well.

“Michael Schumacher understood where the openings were, where the opportunities were, and he took advantage of those, and it's the same with Fernando. 

“He's got to become a team boss eventually, because he'd be brilliant. He just understands this game."