F1 must find a post-Alonso pantomime villain

Getting used to a Fernando Alonso-free Formula 1 will be a difficult task, but the truly unenviable one is working out how the championship will fill the void he will leave.

It may well prove to be an impossible challenge. Through his titles and his tantrums, his wrong choices and his wretched luck, his underdog heroics and his unquestionable ability, Alonso has morphed into a truly unique driver.

In a way, that makes McLaren's job relatively easy. There is no driver like Alonso on the market, so it needs to scour the field for free agents, or likely free agents, compare them against what it has in Stoffel Vandoorne and Lando Norris, and pick the best available option.

F1's challenge as a whole is harder. It now faces the problem that hits all categories and other sports at some point: how do you handle the loss of a legend? When he steps away from F1 at the end of the year, Alonso will be exactly that. His is a legend partially unfulfilled, given his talent alone should have earned more than "only" two titles, but a legend nonetheless.

Fortunately, F1 still has Lewis Hamilton, which means a superstar in its ranks that transcends the motorsport bubble. Having Sebastian Vettel fighting for titles with Ferrari is only boosting his already stellar reputation as a four-time champion. And Max Verstappen appears destined for excellence.

So, F1 has cover in the short-term and beyond, but it must be braced for a net loss, because Alonso is pure box-office gold. That is hard to come by and takes years to develop.

He is one of precious few drivers whose reputation extends beyond F1 and is second only to Hamilton in terms of his global brand value. You want a measure of Alonso's power? He's effectively been a bit-part player in F1 since 2013, yet his reputation has not diminished in the slightest.

Alonso has not been a character in the main plot for years. Perhaps in 2015, when McLaren-Honda was failing so spectacularly in the first season of that partnership, that was a key storyline. But then it became repeated, and sad. Alonso faded into the background, jumping into the spotlight through smoky Honda engines, radio rants and stunts, such as pulling out a deckchair in Brazil.

Entertaining, yes. Something only Alonso could orchestrate so successfully? Probably. But still an on-track irrelevance and not a role befitting his brilliance.

The trick for F1 will be to cover Alonso in as many areas as possible. Rushing to unearth another superstar rarely works. Verstappen is a multiple race winner and prodigious talent, so all F1 needs to do is market that correctly, and the young Dutchman should take care of the rest. The orange army that already follows his every move stands as testament to Verstappen's emerging popularity.

Whether he goes on to achieve massive success or enters an Alonso-like state of making the wrong moves, Verstappen will be of tremendous value

Whether he goes on to achieve massive success or enters an Alonso-like state of making the wrong moves, Verstappen will be of tremendous value. He has the potential to shatter F1's fourth wall and follow Alonso and Hamilton in earning greater recognition in the outside world, which F1 will sorely need - especially when Hamilton joins Alonso in calling it a day.

Verstappen also has the capacity to fill the gap Alonso will leave on the airwaves. Alonso is well aware his team radio channel gets played on the world TV feed more than most - he even complained about it in Hungary prior to the summer break. But there's a reason he gets tapped into so much: he says what he thinks, he doesn't hold back, and he's usually got an amusing quip or two to package it in.

In Hungary, we had the first real experience of Verstappen doing the same. There were serious shades of Alonso in his outburst at Renault's latest failure: "Can I not just go ahead and fuck it? I don't care if this engine blows up. What a fucking joke, all the fucking time with this shit, honestly."

Verstappen apologised for this a day later, something we've never heard from Alonso even when he was calling Honda's 2015 product a "GP2 engine" in its backyard at Suzuka. Maybe that suggests Verstappen is young enough to mature and become more measured in such scenarios, but really what it shows is there is a lot of fire under the surface.

Look back to Canada and you see the same thing: at that point Verstappen had either spun, crashed or been involved in a collision during every GP weekend so far in 2018, and the scrutiny had got to him: "I get a bit tired of all the questions. If I get a few more I will headbutt someone."

Verstappen is only going to have a brighter and brighter spotlight on him. Next season Red Bull will have Honda engines, the cause of so much aggravation for Alonso. Will it be a different story? Very possibly. But if it goes wrong, will Verstappen be a headline-generator? Almost certainly.

Even if Verstappen doesn't become a one-man entertainment army, there are plenty of other soundbite merchants on the grid to potentially fill the Alonso void.

Kevin Magnussen is one. The Haas man is developing into the driver people had hoped he would be when he won the Formula Renault 3.5 title in 2013 and burst onto the F1 scene with a podium on his McLaren debut in '14. He's an exciting driver, aggressive in wheel-to-wheel combat and unafraid to voice his opinions.

Magnussen is also another to have delivered radio gold in the past - and few will forget his "suck my balls" moment in the post-race TV pen with Nico Hulkenberg a year ago.

OK, Magnussen's a midfield man at the moment. But why does that matter? That's all Alonso's been recently, after all. But it has not made it any less entertaining to hear Alonso tell McLaren "We are last, so I don't care" in response to a tyre strategy question in Germany, or in France when he fell away from a higher midfield group and declared that he "didn't care too much" what happened in the race.

That Alonso has been left in such a scenario is one reason why F1 should not get too caught up in lamenting the loss of such a virtuoso performer. It's sad to say, but the days when Alonso's brilliance made a truly meaningful difference are long gone. So, is there really a loss if instead of Alonso using the media to further his own agenda, stoke fires or split opinion, we have Verstappen or Magnussen or even Daniel Ricciardo doing it instead?

Maybe on-track we won't get an exact repeat of Alonso's finest moments, but there are plenty of drivers who can make dynamite memories of their own. A Hamilton vs Vettel title battle ranks in comparison with Michael Schumacher vs Alonso, for example. Next season Ricciardo is moving to Alonso's old stomping ground at Renault, which means we'll have arguably the best wheel-to-wheel racer on the grid busting to pump in some underdog heroics.

Magnussen is also another to have delivered radio gold - few will forget his "suck my balls" moment

The point is F1 and its fans need to move away from the urge to compare and just embrace the potential for multiple drivers to emerge in a space previously dominated by one.

Alonso would not have wanted it this way, but he has found himself cast in several roles over the last decade or so. He was the hero who ended the dominance of Schumacher and Ferrari. He was the villain who helped trigger the McLaren Spygate scandal. He was the disgraced star who sought refuge at old friend Renault, and still won in a mediocre car.

Then he became the underdog at Ferrari, valiantly fighting against wave after wave of Red Bull during the Vettel years and almost took the unlikeliest of titles in 2012. But that was the last time Alonso played a role befitting his talents.

He was also cast as the frustrated fallen giant at first Ferrari and then McLaren when Honda failed to give him what he needed under F1's new engine rules. He has since largely been a sidekick, a mere form of comic relief through the medium of amusing radio rants and self-aggrandising post-race comments about the latest best drive of his career.

Through all of that, Alonso emerged as the ultimate pantomime villain, and it was a role he revelled in. This is what F1 needs Verstappen, or somebody else, to embrace.

The contenders to do so are fiery on-track, but can be boring off it - unless anger strikes.

Alonso played the role deliberately. Some people love to hate him and some people just love him, but he has always been at his most valuable to F1 when he has been at odds with someone - whether it's Hamilton, Vettel, Honda or the people who broadcast his team radio - and using that to his advantage.

That has always been underpinned by his prodigious talent and the legacy he has built, and it adds up to an incredible amount that he has given F1. This is indeed why F1 will need to lean on several drivers, not just one, to try to replace him. The more successful the driver who adopts the part, the bigger the impact for the championship.

F1 should not underestimate the importance of that part. Sport is entertainment after all, and all shows need a proper pantomime villain.