Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso sabbatical would be 'a bad idea', says Hakkinen

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Former Formula One world champion Mika Hakkinen has said that in his view, Fernando Alonso should not be tempted by the idea of taking 2016 off as a sabbatical.

"In the case of Fernando, I do not think it's a very good move," Hakkinen told Spain's AS newspaper this week.

"You have to keep fighting. Once you start, you have to keep fighting. I think it would be very hard to leave the sport and take a year off."

Of course, Hakkinen knows something about this sort of situation. He decided to take a year off from competition at the end of the 2001 season, and although he had every intention of returning to McLaren in 2003 it soon became apparent to him that his time in Formula One was over, although he did later return for a three-year stint in DTM.

"Personally, I was able to come back after my sabbatical year. But then I realized that that was it, I was done - and I was happy."

"I ended my career by winning races and that's a good way to end it."

The same can't be said for Alonso, who has had a wretched time of it in 2015 with Hakkinen's old team which has struggled to get its new partnership with engine provider Honda up to speed.

Alonso's very public dissatisfaction with this year's campaign has led to some sharp words from the two-time former world champion, and a memorable piece of performance art as he sunned himself watching qualifying from the sidelines after yet another technical issue during qualifying in Brazil.

That's led to a number of pundits suggesting that if next year's McLaren doesn't perform well in pre-season testing than the driver could walk away from the team altogether and watch the 2016 championship from the sidelines.

McLaren CEO Ron Dennis has himself talked about the possibility of Alonso taking a sabbatical in 2016, although he insisted that he did not expect this to be the case and was certainly not part of the team's plans, and that he expected Alonso to be alongside Jenson Button again next season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.