18 April 2024 , 08:46
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Mike Krack has admitted Aston Martin were worried Fernando Alonso was going to retire from Formula 1 before signing his new deal.
Last week Alonso put pen to paper on an extension which will keep him on the grid into the new era of F1 technical rules, which begins in 2026. By the end of that year, the Spaniard will have turned 45.
Alonso had several options and was being linked with the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull. He also had the option of retiring which he had not ruled out before agreeing to extend his Aston Martin stay.
And team principal Krack spoke of conversations he had with his star driver which made him worried that he was going to walk away. "No, I was not convinced," he replied when asked if he was confident that Alonso was going to re-sign.
He added: "Fernando was very clear when he joined that the calendar and the travel is draining a lot of energy, especially if you want to do things the way he does them. There is no 99 percent and that is why, with the calendar like it is, it takes everything out of you.
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"And I think he has said it many times, that there is no life. Either you are 100 percent in it or not. So when you see how he is working, when he's there [in the garage], how he is interacting, you see that there is only 100 percent for him. And you understand also that when he says there is no life around that, it is true.
"So considering that I had some concerns that he was going to say, 'No, I want to do something else in life', I was very happy to see that he loves F1 more than private life."
While Alonso had suggested to the team that retirement was an option, Krack went on to confirm there had been no hint that the Spaniard was ever convinced by the prospect of a move to a rival such as Mercedes or Red Bull. The Luxembourger added: "Fernando is a man of his word.
"He told us that what he communicated to the outside was the same as what he communicated to the inside. He said, 'I need to discuss first with myself, and I need to decide if I want to continue. Then, if I want to continue, I want to discuss first with Aston Martin'. This is what happened and we're quite happy that it ended the way it did.
"We had always given ourselves some date at which we wanted to take a decision. There was an agreement that we took quite early. And it was really nice to see that just everybody stuck to what he said. So it went actually as we thought it would go."