Verstappen wants Alonso to win if he cannot

Max Verstappen says that if he cannot win any race this year, he would like to see Fernando Alonso win it instead.
Verstappen’s Red Bull team have won all seven races so far this year and he says it is possible they could win them all.
But the Dutchman said: “If you ask me one driver who I would like to see win a race, it’s him.”

Verstappen, who leads the drivers’ championship by 53 points, said Alonso “deserves it — he is a real racer”.
Alonso, a two-time champion with Renault in 2005 and 2006, last won a race for Ferrari in 2013. He spent four uncompetitive years with McLaren from 2015-18, stepped away from Formula 1 for two years to compete in endurance racing and at Indianapolis, before returning with Alpine in 2021 and then moving to Aston Martin for 2023.

He is third in the championship and has finished on the podium in all but two races so far this year.
Verstappen said: “I like him. He never gave up and you can see he loves the sport. Sometimes, after so many years of only having a car that is capable of driving in the midfield, maybe you lose a bit of that love but he is a real racer. He is an animal.”

Alonso said he was optimistic that Aston Martin would be more competitive in Canada this weekend than they were at the last race in Spain, when they had their weakest performance of the season.

“It should be a good weekend,” said Alonso, who qualified his Alpine second on the grid in the rain in Montreal last year, with wet weather predicted again for Saturday.

“But we also had expectations in Barcelona and we didn’t perform that race. We have a couple of new parts. Hopefully we can be a little bit more competitive than Barcelona.”–BBC