Lewis Hamilton – The feud with Alonso

Although he has never admitted it, Fernando Alonso, double world champion and McLaren’s new number one driver at 10 million pounds per season, must have though he would be the clear number one at his new team without much competition from his rookie teammate Lewis Hamilton, and on his way to a third drivers title. However, their relationship turned sour at the Spanish Grand Prix, Alonso’s home circuit, where Lewis finished second and ahead of Alonso, who was third. Lewis chalked up his fourth consecutive podium finish and was the leader in the driver’s championship. Alonso, instead of congratulating Lewis, could only blame the tires for his poor fourth place result. Tensions became greater when Lewis won in Montreal and Indianapolis where he was able to extend his championship lead over Alonso and the two Ferrari drivers, Raikkonen and Massa. Throughout the season it appears that Alonso worked against Lewis with subtle complaints about favouritism, Lewis being a British driver and McLaren being a British team. This all led to the Hungarian Grand Prix on August 5th 2007, where during qualifying it appeared Alonso had won pole position. Alonso had however, stayed in the pits for too long and left Lewis sitting behind him meaning he had enough time to complete his final lap where Lewis did not. Lewis was not completely innocent though, when Alonso was on a longer fuel burn Lewis should have let him pas but he did not. Alonso did not deliberately hold up his teammate, instead he was held back. Ron Dennis tried to diffuse the situation by saying that both teams are very competitive and want to win and that they are doing their best to balance the pressures within the team and things did not work today. As a result Lewis was given pole, on his way to winning the race, and Alonso was moved back to fourth on the starting grid. Lewis then stumbled in the last two races, not finishing in China and placing a disappointing 7th in Brazil, giving the drivers title to Raikkonen, who finished one point ahead of both Hamilton, and Alonso.