It’s 12 years since Fernando Alonso’s last race win, here’s how F1 has changed  

In a career that has spanned 24 years, Fernando Alonso has won 32 grands prix, stood on 106 podiums and claimed two Formula 1 titles. And while his success continued with a switch to Aston Martin and a handful of podiums in early 2023, it’s been a while since the Spaniard won a race. In fact, it’s exactly 12 years since Alonso last won an F1 contest, and an awful lot has changed in the series since then.  

Alonso’s last race win came on 12 May, 2013, when he claimed the top step of the podium at the Spanish Grand Prix. At the time, he was driving for Ferrari and jumped from fifth to first to taste the winner’s champagne for the 32nd time.   

In the 12 years that followed, Alonso moved teams, retired, came back to F1 and then moved teams again, still without managing to claim another victory. But Alonso’s career isn’t the only thing to have changed in that time, the whole of F1 has shifted hugely in the 12 years since he last won an F1 race.  

New F1 world champions  

If Alonso wasn’t winning races in that period, who was? Well, since the Spaniard last won a grand prix there have been four different world champions, including two who won titles for the very first time.  

The 2013 crown was won by Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, his fourth and last title. After that, the F1 world was treated to years of Mercedes dominance, with Lewis Hamilton picking up wins in 2014 and 2015, team-mate Nico Rosberg winning the title in 2016 before Hamilton claimed a further four.  

Since 2021, F1 has been in another era of dominance, this time at the hands of Red Bull with its star Max Verstappen claiming four consecutive drivers’ championships.  

F1 goes hybrid  

One of the most impactful changes F1 made over the last 12 years was its switch to turbo-hybrid engines to increase sustainability in motorsport.  

For 2014, the series rolled out complex new power units that combine a V6 internal combustion engine with two hybrid components: the MGU-K and MGU-H. Each of these motor generator units recovers power from braking and the heat from exhaust gasses and stores it as electrical energy that can be deployed in a grand prix.  

The implementation of the tech helped F1’s current generation of V6 hybrid engines become the most thermally efficient engines in the world.  

Alonso famously had a tough start to F1’s hybrid revolution, especially in 2015 when he was driving for McLaren with its Honda power unit. The motor was down on power compared to its rivals, and Alonso even went so far as to compare it to a GP2 engine during the Japanese Grand Prix. Honda’s time at the back of the pack didn’t last, however, and it went on to win back-to-back constructors’ crowns with Red Bull in 2022 and 2023.  

All hail the halo 

After four years of hybrid power, F1’s next big innovation arrived to improve driver safety in 2018. The halo was one of two innovations trialled by F1 to offer better head protection for drivers, especially in the aftermath of Jules Bianchi’s crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix – which eventually led to his death in July, 2015.  

The halo is a titanium head protector that arcs over the seat of the driver and is designed to deflect debris that flies towards an F1 driver’s head. The device was tested to withstand things like errant wheels and other flying debris, and can also support the weight of a double decker bus.  

The device, while controversial when it first appeared on F1 cars, has already proven its worth on the race track in crashes such as Roman Grosjean’s at the 2020 Bahrain GP and Zhou Guanyu’s roll at Silverstone in 2022.  

The Drive to Survive effect 

Over the course of 2018, F1 tried something new: it let film crews into the paddock and behind the scenes of the travelling circus. With access to almost every team on the grid, except Ferrari and Mercedes in its first season, Drive to Survive proved to be a phenomenon and reignited global interest in F1.  

The first season focused on storylines away from the race-winning ways of Mercedes, with episodes dedicated to the Haas team and its larger-than-life boss, Guenther Steiner, and Red Bull and the dynamic between its drivers Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo. The series even highlighted Alonso’s retirement from F1, when he left McLaren at the conclusion of 2018.  

The series brought new fans to F1 in droves and sparked a revolution in the way drivers and teams conduct themselves – with an increased emphasis on letting their personalities shine through.  

Team changes  

In the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, 11 F1 teams lined up on the grid to start the race. Today, two of those squads no longer exist, a new side has joined the fold and three teams have completely different names compared with 12 years ago.  

Caterham and Marussia struggled throughout 2013 fighting for 10th place in the standings. The following year, Caterham entered administration and pulled out whilst Marussia continued until 2015, before re-branding as Manor Racing in 2016. It, too, pulled out of F1 before the start of the 2017 season.  

Then, there are the name changes. Lotus became Renault in 2016 and rebranded as Alpine for 2021, Force India was sold to Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll after it entered administration in 2018 and emerged as Racing Point. Stroll later rebranded the team as Aston Martin for 2021. 

Toro Rosso became Alpha Tauri in 2020, then RB in 2024 and now it races as Racing Bulls. Sauber became Alfa Romeo in 2019, then reverted to its original name for 2024 ahead of its pivot to become the Audi factory team from 2026. Finally, Haas entered F1 in 2016 and has become a midfield regular since. 

Ground effect takes hold  

While all those team name changes were going on, F1 went through another seismic shift with the rollout of its 2022 regulations. The new rules set out to create closer racing and a more competitive grid through a clean slate car design philosophy that cut the turbulent air produced while racing.  

To do this, F1 switched to a ground effect philosophy that hadn’t been seen since the early 1980s.  

The new cars rely on complex underfloor channels to create most of the downforce that sticks them to the road by creating low pressure underneath and sucking the car to the track. In the first season of this new philosophy, cars suffered from bouncing issues that particularly hit on long straights and made the cars very uncomfortable for drivers.  

Those problems were, largely, ironed out after the first season of the new rules, and it did achieve its aim of making cars easier to follow and pass. It didn’t, however, tighten up the grid as Red Bull came into the new rules as a dominant force. It wasn’t until other teams wrapped their heads around the new regulations after a handful of seasons that the racing got closer once again.  

Track changes  

Historic circuits like Monza, Silverstone and Spa were all on the calendar in 2013 and remain on the schedule in 2025. But, F1 has added a host of new, and returning, tracks to its schedule in the years since Alonso picked up his last race win.  

Back in 2013, the 19-race calendar included grands prix in Malaysia, Germany, South Korea and India, and none of those tracks feature on 2025’s 24-race season. Instead, F1 added new races in the U.S., with events in Miami and Las Vegas joining Austin on the calendar. It also expanded in the Middle East as Saudi Arabia and Qatar picked up events.  

There are also revived races in countries such as the Netherlands, which returned to the F1 calendar in 2021 following a 35-year hiatus, and Imola, which returned to the calendar in 2020.