Fernando Alonso believes his Formula 1 feud with Lewis Hamilton in 2007 would have been avoided with an authoritative figure such as Flavio Briatore or Lawrence Stroll in charge of McLaren over Ron Dennis.
Alonso arrived at McLaren from Renault as the reigning double F1 champion with the expectancy that he would have the edge over a rookie Hamilton in the opposite garage.
However, Hamilton surprised both his team-mate and the entire sport when he rattled off nine consecutive podiums to lead the Drivers’ Championship in his maiden season.
The competition between the two escalated during qualifying in Hungary when Alonso remained in his pit box to prevent Hamilton from completing his final timed run in Q3.
Their intense desire to beat each other each weekend resulted in both falling one point short of the title that season, with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen pouncing on that fall-out.
Alonso is convinced that Dennis, who had also overseen the conflict between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, was to blame for the divide that emerged in McLaren at that time.
“We were young, immature, I was the first, and we had many clashes. And then we had a boss who did not know how to control the situation because I believe that this would not have happened with Flavio Briatore, or with Lawrence Stroll,” Alonso explained in the DAZN documentary, ‘Fernando. Revealed’.
“There are certain characters in Formula 1 who are respected, and others where the drivers have a bit of control of the situation,” he continued. “And in that McLaren of 2007, the drivers had too much control, and no one gave us a serious warning.”
Alonso admits that both drivers prioritised their individual battle over the team as they sought to discover any marginal gains that could give them an advantage over the other.
“You arrive at the team meeting and you are looking at their telemetry, their on-board cameras and you see that their car is understeering, for example, it has little grip at the front,” he explained. “And when he speaks at the meeting he complains about the rear.
“Things like that so that the team did not take a direction or philosophy to develop the car that would be good for both of us, but rather each one looked for their own thing, to have that extra advantage because we were very evenly matched. There were many things that broke the connection a little harmony of that year.”
Alonso left McLaren after one season following his alleged involvement in the Spygate scandal that saw the Woking-based squad fined $100 million and disqualified from the championship for possessing confidential information from rivals Ferrari.
The Spaniard, who has plans to release a book once he has concluded his career, reckons that most of what transpired that season will not be revealed to the public.
“I think that a lot of what happened in 2007 is going to remain under lock and key because I even think I have erased many things,” he conceded.
“I would have to remember a lot to go into the details. It was a difficult year, a year where Hamilton was most at fault and me because of immaturity and lack of more teamwork.”
Alonso and Hamilton’s paths on track have seldom passed since the V6 turbo-hybrid engines in 2014 ushered in a period of dominance for the Briton’s Mercedes team.
While Alonso, now with Aston Martin, is still striving to achieve a third Drivers’ title, Hamilton is a seven-time champion and has amassed a record 103 F1 race victories.
However, Mercedes’ demise under the latest ground effect regulations and Aston Martin’s resurgence did witness Alonso come out on top in wheel-to-wheel battles last season.
“I think that now there is another type of rivalry, I don’t think we will be friends in the future. I think we don’t share many things, but it is true that in 2007 the rivalry rose to a higher level,” Alonso proclaimed.
“That was in 2007, but in 2013 we were in Canada playing cat and mouse, in Abu Dhabi the last one this year too… And in Bahrain, which was a bit of a happy moment at the beginning of the year because it had arrived to Aston Martin and in the fight for the podium I have to pass Hamilton at Turn 10.
“Every time we overtake each other it has an extra satisfaction… and pain when you are the one ahead. And I think we are going to do that, always have [that] with us.”
