That the bombing caused by the Aston Martin this season caught Fernando Alonso himself off the rails has not prevented the Spaniard from getting on the media cob that has generated the great performance of his new car. The leap in quality has been so tremendous that it has forced the British team to rethink its objectives in order to adapt them to the expectations it has generated, which right now would lead it to fight for second place in the statistics reserved for manufacturers. Before the AMR23 gathered most of the focus in the winter tests, in February, nobody could imagine that the oldest member of the grid, a driver with 41 years of age and two titles that he celebrated more than a decade and a half ago , and that on paper he was preparing to give his last blows in the World Cup, he would appear third in the points table, he would not have gotten off the podium in the first three grand prizes and it would be the spring that would have triggered interest in Formula 1 in Spain and take it to unprecedented levels since the introduction of pay per view.
The numbers left by Alonso’s start with the Silverstone team (Great Britain) are brutal. According to data from FormulaTV -Dazn, the owner of the television rights does not give official figures-, the podium number 100 of his career, which he won in Saudi Arabia at the second stop on the calendar, drew an average of 793,000 viewers . This is 8.3% of the screen share, with peaks that exceeded one million people, a record since the championship stopped being broadcast in the open (2014). In an unattainable fourth dimension are the more than eight and a half million viewers who saw the man from Oviedo put on his second crown, at the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix. The fragmentation of the audience as a result of the appearance of new channels makes it impossible to reach Those numbers, although that doesn’t necessarily mean people will move on from F1.
On February 10, a couple of weeks before preseason training began, Alonso opened his Tik Tok account, followed by almost a million users. Two months later, the hashtag #FernandoAlonso accumulates more than 2,000 million views; the famous #ElPlan, which he created when he decided to return to the big circus in 2021, 350 million views; and #ElNano, which is how it is known, more than 173 million. Now, everything revolves around the number 33, that he will achieve when he climbs back to the top step of the podium. “I think Fernando is closer to getting his 33rd victory in F1 than I am my second,” said Carlos Sainz, the second Spaniard on the grid. Circumstances are much more favorable for the man from Oviedo to achieve that victory than he could initially have foreseen, but the margin of advantage shown by Red Bull makes that goal inevitably go through a bad weekend for the energetic troop. Both will meet again next weekend at the Azerbaijan GP.
The 14 short videos that the Asturian has uploaded on Tik Tok have run almost more than his car, reaching peaks of over 11 million views. That maneuver has allowed him to establish a connection with generation Z in less than two months. “He has been able to find a way to connect with the public throughout his entire sports career, adapting to the particularities of the public at all times,” says Javier Mancebo, an expert in sports sponsorship, by telephone. “The main thing,” the analyst points out, “is that he wins again. That makes all those traits that had already made him an icon so long ago recover. In addition, to the talent and all the attributes that were always valued, we must add tenacity, since he has been able to come back to the top with more than 40 years ”. In this aspect, Mancebo meets Pedro De la Rosa, former F1 driver and who now performs the functions of ambassador of the structure of the green cars. “It is that the story is spectacular. Fernando arrives at a time in his life in which he has gone through different stages that did not turn out as he expected, and he is enjoying this chapter as I think he never had”, says the Catalan, who coincided with Alonso at McLaren (2007 ), then at Ferrari (2010-2014), and now at the green car brand.
Wardem is a company dedicated to intelligent digital listening or smart listening, which uses pioneering technology in Spain. The differentiating element of its protocol is that, in addition to counting the searches that are made through the different available engines, it is capable of cross-checking the information obtained with the mentions of all the conversations that the digital ecosystem encompasses on its multiple platforms (Instagram , Twitter, Tik Tok, etc.). That allows them to have a global vision, the complete picture. “In addition, we give it context. We live in the age of information overload. Everyone has data. The value is in the analysis, interpretation and use given to these data”, says Hugo Ramos, the director of the agency. “We not only know that the mentions of Alonso have skyrocketed, and that he for the first time comfortably surpasses Hamilton in that aspect (by 681%). Or that he has increased his growth in the number of followers on Instagram by 247% compared to the same period in 2022 ″, adds this Madrid-based Galician architect, whose concern has led him in other directions.
The conclusions of the report commissioned by EL PAÍS coincide on the basis of those that have been published since the boom which marked the beginning of this World Cup. But the grace is in the nuances. “His current level of notoriety of him (March) is the highest since 2007 – his first spell at McLaren and when he met Lewis Hamilton there. His peak in this parameter was reached in 2006 (when he was proclaimed two-time champion) ”, says this specialist in separating the wheat from the chaff:“ But what is interesting is to see the transformation that the ‘conversation’ about him has undergone. Until he started the championship, most of the noise on it contained humorous or everyday elements. In February 2023, when it is detected that his car works, the trend changes radically and his attributes as a driver gain a lot of weight ”.
If Alonso is on almost everyone’s lips, Aston Martin has broken into the spectrum of luxury car brands as James Bond, its most recognizable symbol, usually does in the movies. “We took three other manufacturers from the same niche as a reference (Maserati, Lamborghini and Porsche). In May 2021 (within two months of returning to F1), it was the least known brand of the four we studied. Today it concentrates 60% of the conversations in the digital environment, and exceeds the other three combined by 663%”, concludes Ramos.
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