Fernando Alonso’s future continues to be clouded in mystery.<\/p>\n
What does seem certain is that his five-year relationship with Ferrari is set to end, with the only thing blocking his official departure and the arrival of Sebastian Vettel being a Mexican standoff-style contractual impasse.<\/p>\n
It is believed Ferrari and Alonso are both waiting for the other to publicly declare it’s over and therefore breach contract — either costing or saving the Italian team up to an incredible $50 million payout due to the Spaniard.<\/p>\n
It is an odd situation, given that Luca di Montezemolo’s parting shot as president was to declare that the Alonso-Ferrari marriage is definitely over.<\/p>\n
“Yes Luca said something,” Alonso is quoted by Germany’s Focus, “but I have been every day on the Ferrari website and nothing has been written.”<\/p>\n
The paddock perception is that Ferrari’s supposed signing of German Vettel caught Alonso by surprise, leaving him to choose between a move to McLaren-Honda or a sabbatical.<\/p>\n
But Lotus might be the ideal stepping stone for a works Mercedes deal for the 33-year-old, and even the Enstone team’s owner Gerard Lopez is not ruling it out.<\/p>\n
“It would not surprise me,” the Luxembourger told France’s Canal Plus, “if Alonso should someday return to the cockpit of a formula one car from Enstone.”<\/p>\n
McLaren, on the other hand, is saying nothing, much to the frustration of the British team’s current drivers, Kevin Magnussen and the 2009 world champion Jenson Button.<\/p>\n
Asked how many drivers Woking is considering for 2015, team boss Eric Boullier laughed to Finland’s MTV3 broadcaster: “Hundreds.<\/p>\n
“In all honesty, four or five,” he added.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fernando Alonso’s future continues to be clouded in mystery. What does seem certain is that his five-year relationship with Ferrari is set to end, with the only thing blocking his official departure and the arrival of Sebastian Vettel being a Mexican standoff-style contractual impasse. It is believed Ferrari and Alonso are both waiting for the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,5262,149,93,5340,58,153,3596,306,5284,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25472,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25471\/revisions\/25472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}