The bitter feud between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso when they were teammates is one of the most well-known in F1, but the origins go beyond that pit lane incident in Hungary.
The 2007 season was Hamilton’s first in F1 after graduating from GP2, in which he proved to everyone he had the potential to go on to great success.
He joined McLaren, having been part of their driver academy for much of his junior career, and was pitted against defending world champion Alonso who had just switched from Renault off the back of winning two titles between 2005 and 2006.
It took just five races before a rift began to emerge between the pair, in what would become one of the most bitter F1 teammate rivalries since Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
Lewis Hamilton asserts himself in McLaren teammate battle with Fernando Alonso
Hamilton was supposed to be the apprentice to Alonso, but that narrative quickly got thrown out the window when he pulled off an aggressive overtake on the Spaniard into the first corner at the season opener in Melbourne.
Although Hamilton would go on to finish the race in third behind Alonso, it was a sign that the Spaniard was not going to have a teammate who would be willing to finish second-best.
Alonso had won one race after the first four Grands Prix, but it was Hamilton who led in the championship by two points. The Spaniard was keen to reassert himself as the title leader.
Fast forward to the Monaco GP, and Hamilton is eager to beat Alonso around the streets of the principality. The pair dominated in qualifying by trading quickest times, but it was the more experienced Alonso who came out on top.
The race panned out in typical Monaco fashion as drivers struggled to overtake, and for McLaren this would become a problem.
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Lewis Hamilton defied team orders at the Monaco GP and sparked Fernando Alonso rivalry
The job of a team is to maximise their results on track, which is why they avoid teammates from battling on track, especially one that is incredibly high risk as Monaco.
A mistake or a half-attempt at an overtake could put both drivers into the wall and end their races, so you want them to reduce the risk as the race goes on.
McLaren had the lucrative position of being 1-2 at a track that is nearly impossible to overtake on, but that didn’t stop Hamilton from applying the pressure on Alonso.
Discussing how it panned out for Motorsport Magazine, former McLaren race engineer Steve Hallam recalls how Hamilton defied team orders to turn their engines down.
“The deal was: everybody turns the engines down, just go to the end, and that’s the finishing order. So I told Fernando on the radio to reduce power,” said Hallam.
“Fernando did as I said, but Lewis came right up to the back of him, so in retaliation the former turned it back up again, and gapped him a little bit.
“Fernando said to me ‘I’ll turn mine down when he turns his down.’ Ron [Dennis] then told Lewis’s team to reduce his power, and I think he then actually got on the radio himself.”
Hamilton and Alonso would settle and bring home a 1-2 for the team, but it sparked the beginning of their on track feud.
What was the outcome to the Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso feud in 2007?
Things would blow up from there with Hamilton taking wins in Canada and the US, prompting comments from Alonso that he was being favoured because he is a British driver in a British team.
Later in the season, Alonso would intentionally block Hamilton during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Alonso would also get implicated in the Spygate scandal that rocked the team, which would result in a $100 million and disqualification in the Constructors’ Championship.
Neither Alonso nor Hamilton would win the Drivers’ title that year after getting beaten by Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen by one point, but it did give F1 one of its best teammate rivalries of the decade.