Birthday boy Alonso says 'I don't feel like I'm 40!'

Fernando Alonso can blow out 40 candles today. With an average age of around 27 in Formula 1, the Spanish driver belongs to the old guard of the sport. After two years of absence he returned to the grid at Alpine this season and is still feeling good.

Age is just a number

Alonso isn't the oldest driver on the grid, that is Kimi Raikkonen (41), and he's certainly not one of the oldest Formula 1 drivers in history. Especially in the early years of the sport, there were many drivers over 50. The oldest driver to ever race a Grand Prix is Louis Chiron during the Monaco Grand Prix in 1955. He was 55 years and 292 days old at the time.

For Alonso, then, age is mostly just a number. "It's a bigger number than how I feel, but it's how it is," he told Crash.net. "I feel good, I definitely don't feel forty." When he sees the number written somewhere, it still surprises him. "I see it everywhere now because the team has put up nice decorations," he says.

Enjoy Formula 1 more

The two-time world champion didn't, however, expect to still be driving Formula 1 at 40. "No, probably not. You don't think too much about the future at that age," Alonso explained. "You only concentrate on the race weekend and you hardly imagine more than two or three years into the future."

With all his experience, though, Alonso is now much more at ease in Formula One. "When I came into the sport, I came from a very small town in the north of Spain with no experience. Now I know how things are and I can enjoy it much more. I'm more used to the sport."