A dream come true at last

Fernando Alonso`s victory at SPA, driving a Toyota in an endurance race was a dream of mine. I appreciate Alonso, but am not necessarily a die-hard fan of his. The dream has to do with something else.

I began following racing at first timidly as an 8-year old in 1969, and my first full season of "serious" racing was 1972. By then I had become aware of the different categories, venues, and styles. I loved Formula 1, but I also loved the World Championship of Makes.

That season, a large number of Formula 1 drivers still raced in the Endurance championship. Off the top of my head, I came up with this list of drivers that raced in both F-1 and the Prototype championship that year: Ickx, Regazzoni, Marko, Galli, De Adamich, Bell, Redman, Peterson, Schenken, Ganley, Cevert, Hill, Migault, Beltoise, Amon, Pescarolo, Pace, Soler-Roig, Revson, Merzario, Andretti, W. Fittipaldi Jr., Wisell and Stommelen.

Out of many drivers used by Ferrari in its prototype campaign in 1972, only Sandro Munari did not race in F1 the same year.

While it is true that 72's  top 3 in F-1 did not touch endurance racing, the number 4, Ickx, won and was extremely competitive in both categories.

Times were different, of course. For one, the F-1 championship had only 12 races in 1972. Second, even GP drivers did not make much money back in those days, and to make a few more Dollars, Francs of Deutsche Marks,  they raced not only in the Makes Championship, but also Formula 2, Touring Cars, Formula 5000, Can-Am, Interserie, 2 Liters, hill climbs, and even local racing. With time, and TV, the F-1 schedule expanded to the current 20 plus races and so did salaries - in a nutshell, there is no more NEED for a driver to risk his neck in other categories, for any Joe can make US$ 500,000 a year driving F-1.

Every once in a while a current F1 driver might risk driving at Le Mans, like Hulkenberg a couple of years, back, but by and large, drivers stay in their own categories. I actually never thought I would witness a top F1 driver (Alonso is still highly rated, after all) ever again drive in an Endurance championship race.

Of course, I do not expect this to be a trend. For one, Alonso only accepted the ride because it was Toyota, which is the absolute class of the field. Back in 72 there were at least five competitive teams around, some with as many as 4 cars in certain races. Current GP drivers might be lured into Endurance if, and only if, there are a few top manufacturer teams - driving in a privateer LMP1 team is unlikely to draw top F1 contenders back into the long-distance game.

So let us enjoy while Alonso and Toyota are still around. Both are not likely to linger on much longer.