Sunday morning, Motegi. The warm-up for the Japanese Grand Prix has only just finished and Marc Marquez is in the hands of his physiotherapist, his right arm under ice. Meanwhile, at the kart race the championship has laid on for the riders as a show before the main event, someone turns up wearing his helmet and his gloves. It isn’t him. Jorge Martin, his rival for the title, notices straight away.

A few hours later Marquez wins the Grand Prix, a day after winning the Sprint as well, and closes to within two points of Martin in the standings. The championship told him off for the body-double prank, and he owned up without beating about the bush, explaining that they had come to Motegi to fight for the world title, not to drive around in karts.

Thirty-three years old, a first title won at twenty and a very clear idea of which risks are worth taking. It is a small-scale portrait of a change running through the whole of motorsport: driver longevity at the top is no longer the exception, and to whoever sponsors him, a long-lasting driver is a different product. More credible, more recognizable, wiser in his choices. But also, inevitably, with less road ahead of him.

How old are the drivers at the top today?

At the top of motorsport today, you can win at forty and beyond. In 2021, saying goodbye to Valentino Rossi on our blog, we wrote that the calendar shows no mercy and that “heart matters little; at 41 it is hard to go fast.” Five years on, that line deserves at the very least a rethink.

Fernando Alonso is forty-five and the oldest driver in Formula 1: at the end of September he signed with Aston Martin for 2027 too, a season in which he will turn forty-six. Lewis Hamilton, at Ferrari, is forty-one. Denny Hamlin, at the wheel of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 11 Toyota in NASCAR, is forty-five, like Alonso. Alessandro Pier Guidi is forty-two and James Calado thirty-seven, and together with Antonio Giovinazzi they won the 2025 World Endurance Championship in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P. Maro Engel, a Mercedes-AMG factory driver, is forty-one. Sébastien Buemi, with Toyota in the WEC, is thirty-seven, as is Elfyn Evans in the World Rally Championship. Johann Zarco, who races in MotoGP for Castrol Honda LCR, is thirty-six.

In this company Marc Marquez, at thirty-three, would almost pass for a youngster. Were it not that in 2013 he became the youngest ever champion of the premier class, at twenty years and 266 days, and that thirteen seasons later he is still there, fighting for the title.

Why do drivers race for longer today?

Because they train, eat and recover better than they used to, because the cars are safer and less punishing, and because at this level experience counts for more than reflexes. The drivers know it well, and they say so.

As early as 2021 Lewis Hamilton pointed out that the sport has become steadily safer, that today’s drivers are probably healthier than those of the past and that experience makes them more consistent. A couple of years later he added an almost confessional detail: at twenty-two, recovery was not on his mind; today it is a priority, built on specialists, nutrition and method. Fernando Alonso, in October 2024, laid out the technical side: seats, helmets and safety systems have all improved, and since the cars start with a full tank, nobody drives on the limit for the whole race. The real physical effort now comes in the few minutes of qualifying.

The most fascinating explanation, though, comes from journalist Mark Hughes on the Motor Sport Show in spring 2026. Driving on the limit, he argues, is not a matter of reflexes but of feel, of sensors at the base of the spine and in the inner ear. And that does not fade at forty. What fades, if anything, is the appetite: after winning a lot and earning a lot, staying at that level of intensity every single day wears you down, and above all it wears down the mind.

It is no coincidence, then, that both Kimi Räikkönen and Alonso needed to stop in order to start again. Räikkönen, at forty-one, said that without his two years away from Formula 1 he would no longer have been there. Alonso, who now says he feels fast and motivated, considers his two seasons out, 2019 and 2020, to have been decisive.

The veteran’s paradox

We define the “veteran’s paradox” as the condition in which a driver becomes all the more valuable to a sponsor the less time he has left to offer.

Valuable, first of all, for credibility: that of someone who has already won, already lost, and chosen to stay. Then for recognizability, which cannot be bought with one brilliant season but builds up year after year, race after race. Fernando Alonso has raced in Formula 1 since 2001 and at the end of September had 440 starts, more than anyone else in history: a quarter of a century on the grid turns a driver into something more than a driver.

And then there is something more elusive, which marketing struggles to measure but which anyone who has spent time in a paddock recognizes at first glance: the allure of someone who refuses to surrender to his birth certificate. Call it an aura, if you like. It certainly does not settle on those who have only just arrived.

Finally, there is the mind. Experience, as Lewis Hamilton put it, makes drivers more consistent, and anyone who puts their brand on them soon learns to appreciate the difference. An experienced driver knows when to attack and when to bring the result home, knows what to say and what to keep to himself in front of a microphone. He springs no surprises, for better and above all for worse.

The luxury of saying no

A mature driver, and this is the other side of the coin, is also a driver who has learned to say no. No to appearances for the sake of it, no to the lure of one more fee, no to the games and sideshows where you can get hurt for no real reason. The body double Marc Marquez sent to the Motegi kart race is simply the most entertaining version of this rule.

It would be wrong, though, to read it as the caution of someone nearing the end of the road. That Sunday, October 4, 2026, Marquez won the Japanese Grand Prix, having won the Sprint the day before. Not even Jorge Martin, who did take part in the kart race, was willing to take chances: at the first corner, he said, he eased off so as not to throw away the Grand Prix in a collision. So it is not a question of age but of what is at stake. Whoever has a lot to lose (a title, a contract, a name built over twenty years) chooses carefully which risks to run.

For a sponsor this is good news, because it protects the investment. For those who build events, exhibitions and client days around the driver, on the other hand, it is a limit to factor in from day one. The mature champion chooses what to lend himself to. And the show, as the championship found out at Motegi, does not always sit well with protecting him.

The reckoning with time

That leaves the other side of the paradox, the one no contract can erase: a forty-five-year-old driver has less road ahead of him than a twenty-five-year-old. Just look at the stated horizons. Johann Zarco has a deal with Castrol Honda LCR until the end of 2027. Lewis Hamilton received confirmation for 2027 in July from Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur. Fernando Alonso has renewed with Aston Martin for 2027, in an announcement that does not specify the length of the deal, and insists he can carry on for a few more years. We can believe him. But whoever ties their brand to his name today is buying, in black and white, one season.

The Marquez of 2013 was the exact opposite: all future and no guarantees. Whoever backed him at the time was betting on a career nobody could foresee; whoever picks a veteran today holds a book that is largely already written, with only the last pages left to read. They are two different investments, and they need to be weighed differently.

And this is where the game is really played. A sponsorship built around a mature driver cannot rest on him alone: there has to be something that remains when he climbs out of the car for the last time, a bond with the team, with the championship, with the fans who have learned to see that brand next to his name. It holds for anyone thinking of sponsoring in Formula 1 as much as for those looking at MotoGP: the driver is the face, but he cannot be the only thing to hold on to.

Alonso says he feels fast and motivated, and there is no reason to doubt it. But for those standing beside him with their brand, sooner or later, the question will be a different one: what will be left of all that credibility the day after the last checkered flag? Better to ask it now, while he is still fast.