How is it that you can ram two disliked things together and, instead of creating a magnet of hatred, become the ones everyone roots for?

Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin were, for the last couple of seasons, the guys in Formula One everyone loved to loathe. Yet in Bahrain, the love for the hot-headed Spaniard and his green machine reached new heights.

But why? For the better part of a decade, Alonso has been the bad boy of Formula One, regarded by many as a petulant has-been living off mid-2000s glory.

He acknowledged as much in the recent season of Drive to Survive, explaining that in sport you “need heroes and anti-heroes … I am on the dark side.”

During his time at McLaren, Alonso’s radio chatter was a litany of complaints, once ranting that the car had a “GP2 engine”.

It was clear his standards were too high for the struggling team, and fans were looking forward to the day F1’s chief moaner called time on a fascinating career and bided his time in IndyCar racing in the United States.

But then, after just one year of retirement, he made his comeback to French flag-bearer Alpine in 2021, drawing ire from some who felt he was taking the spot of a deserving young driver.

Worse still, he becomes the face of a rich man’s ego-bearing franchise in 2023.

Aston Martin draws negative attention as a vanity project for Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who bought the team formerly known as Force India in order to secure a drivers’ seat for his son, Lance.

There have been intermittent periods of success for the team, which is based in the facility built by Jordan in the 1990s. But two bad seasons have seen rumblings come from within that the Strolls are running things into the ground, with reports suggesting Lawrence often raises expectations without providing an environment to succeed. He can be a difficult man to work for, it seems.

In addition, the team’s predecessor Racing Point was punished for illegally copying the 2019 Mercedes for the 2020 season, a car dubbed the ‘Pink Mercedes’. And last season, the team's copy-and-paste tactics returned when they arrived at the Spanish Grand Prix with sidepods very similar to those on Red Bull’s cars.

In short, all that leaves Alonso and Stroll the Younger well-poised to experience a season of failure on the track and little goodwill off it.

But we have seen the exact opposite happen, with Alonso delighting viewers by getting onto the podium with a third-place finish in Bahrain, doing so after being the fastest driver in two out of three practice sessions.

The fans reacted well too - when F1’s official Instagram account posted news that Verstappen won the race it attracted 846,000 likes, their post on Alsonso’s podium has twice that.

And the reason why is this: F1 fans are dying for someone to ruffle the feathers of the big three - even if it is Aston Martin.

Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes were the only teams with wins last season. The gap between the top three and the rest in the constructors' championship was staggering - Mercedes were third with 515 points, Alpine fourth with 173 - and Alonso’s presence in the top echelons is genuinely exciting.

This divide is not new. Only once in the last six seasons has another team made the top three in the constructors’ standings (McLaren 2020).

The point of F1’s new regulations, which kicked in last year, was to end one-team dominance, like we have seen from Ferrari in the 2000s and Mercedes in the late 2010’s, and create a wide-open championship. 

This, in conjunction with the cost-cap measures designed to curb the financial might of the big boys, promised to make things more equal. But that hasn’t happened.

Miracles do not happen in Formula One, but Alonso has the ability to at least make us believe they can. And maybe, not unlike Brawn GP in 2009, there is some life in this one - the AMR23 had the fastest in some mini-sectors of Bahrain, and is certainly making Mercedes sweat.

Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are all in a state of shock after their poor performance. They could be dumped to fourth in the standings should Aston Martin continue to out-perform them - but that comes with a couple of ifs.

Firstly, Aston Martin need to keep ahead of the upgrade packages other teams will bring later in the season. Mercedes improved as the year went on in 2022 and will do so again, they have the resources.

The other depends on whether Lance Stroll can collect enough points while Alonso flourishes. Despite the hatred for being a driver due to daddy’s dollars, his performances aren't that bad. He kept up with Sebastian Vettel last year and was sixth in Bahrain - one better than Russell.

The ‘anti-hero' in question is also a complex character who still has any likeable traits that draws some fans towards him. Alonso is a master at his craft, especially defensively as he shown in Hungary 2021, and is a true motor sport genius.

He’s also 41 years old, and who doesn’t admire a veteran still performing at his best so long into his career?

It’s also good for those who fell in love with the sport during Alonso’s time to see him finally make a good career choice and have one last crack at a third championship.

He still is the guy who stopped the boredom of Michael Schumacher’s dominance with his two World Championships in 2005 and 2006, and is also the one who came so close to winning at Ferrari during Vettel’s dominant period, coming agonisingly close to breaking through too many times.

Fans are willing to give Alonso a free pass if he can make us dream of a fairer championship. The moans at McLaren are fading into the rear-view mirror, and Aston Martin seem more likeable when they do things right, easing the narrative on the Stroll family who have pumped money and are very ambitious in this project.

They move into a new brand-new facility soon with their own wind tunnel and hope one day to build their own engines instead of being a Mercedes customer team, and that can’t be a bad thing for the sport.

And, to his credit, Lance performed decently this weekend despite having to work through a lot of pain in his wrist following a cycling accident that put him out of testing – Alonso dubbed him a “hero”.

Although Alonso impressed in pre-season testing the Spaniard still felt he was dreaming after only his second podium since 2014.

“I had the same feeling from testing - it’s too good to be true. You’re always expecting that you will (take) a step back and you will get back to reality. But it seems real," he enthused.

“I really enjoyed the race and, even after the checkered flag, I felt like I could have driven for another hour.”

Good to see Alonso is finally enjoying himself.