Brown: "I found him quite easy to work with"

With the return of Fernando Alonso to Formula 1, it is going to be interesting how he mixes with his team at Renault. In the past, he has been at odds with his team bosses. His most recent F1 team boss, Zak Brown of McLaren, however, has revealed he never had any problems with him.

Bad reputation

Brown joined McLaren in 2016 and took over the role of CEO from Ron Dennis in 2018. He joined the British team with Fernando Alonso in his final years. "I thoroughly enjoy racing with him," Brown said in an interview with Peter Windsor. "Even though we mainly had bad races."

When Brown joined McLaren he was warned about Alonso. "He's got a reputation that I never really saw. Everyone said he was going to be difficult to manage, but I found him quite easy to work with." So he had an excellent relationship with the double world champion. "We never had any incidents.”

Brown has a driver mindset

During his career Alonso had clashed with Ron Dennis at McLaren and Marco Mattiacci at Ferrari. Brown believes there is a reason why he got along with Alonso. "Maybe it's because I have kind of a driver mindset and I work with drivers a bit differently.”

Next year Alonso will return to Formula 1 at Alpine. "He’s going to be a fierce competitor. He's the best all-round driver I've worked with and I think the speed will definitively be there. He's going to be a guy that's tough to beat on the track.”