‘Very different’: Alonso and Hamilton compare McLaren’s title fight to their 2007 rivalry

Fernando Alonso says there is a key difference between the McLaren drivers’ title fight this year and the one he experienced at the team in 2007.

He joined McLaren that year after winning his second world championship and took the points lead at the second round. However team mate Lewis Hamilton later overtook him and the pair went into the final round in competition with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen for the title. Raikkonen won, beating the pair by a single point.

McLaren face a similar situation this year as Lando Norris leads the standings by one point from Oscar Piastri. However Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has cut his gap to the championship lead in all of the past five rounds.

With almost nothing to choose between their drivers in the standings, McLaren have consistently refused to single out either of them as their priority in the championship. This week McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said he would prefer to repeat the outcome of 2007 than favour either of their drivers.

Alonso said the situation was different in 2007. He pointed out comments former McLaren team principal Ron Dennis made following the penultimate round of that season in China.

“I don’t think the scenario is exactly the same,” he told the official F1 channel. “In 2007, I remember Ron in China saying that ‘we were racing against Fernando’ – ‘our race was with Fernando, not with Kimi’.

“So imagine that Zak says now: ‘our race was with Oscar, not Max’. So a very different scenario.”

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Dennis made the comment after Hamilton retired from the penultimate race of the season in Shanghai. He had gone into the race 12 points ahead of Alonso with 20 points available over the final two rounds.

Alonso’s relationship with McLaren broke down earlier in the season after he revealed the existence of emails detailing the team’s use of information belonging to Ferrari which led the FIA to disqualify them from the constructors’ championship and fine them $100 million. McLaren cut short his deal to drive for them and Alonso left at the end of the year.

At the time Alonso played down Dennis’s comments, saying: “I was surprised, but I think it is difficult to see what is true, what is just normal words that you say after the race and if you take in a different way you can make some problems.” He returned to drive for the team under Dennis in 2015, three years after Hamilton left.

Hamilton, who also fought his team mate Nico Rosberg in three consecutive championship contests at Mercedes, said it is difficult for teams to decide whether to prioritise one driver in the title fight. “I’ve had the experience of being in the team where you had two drivers fighting for a championship and we went all the way to the last race and ultimately we lost it – both of us lost it,” he said.

“I don’t think any of the fans really particularly care, massively, about the constructors’ championship,” Hamilton continued, “that’s more the team cares about those sorts of things and then we care – as drivers – about that for the team. But people care about the drivers’ championship.

“But choosing a driver is very difficult, I would say. Fortunately I’m not a team manager so I don’t have to worry about those decisions.”

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