Matt Youson is chief writer for the F1 paddock daily newspaper The Red Bulletin. He also contributes to F1 Racing, Racing Line, Intersection, FX and The Observer. Here he writes exclusively centraltyre.net on what's really happening inside Formula One.

 

Inside F1

 

F1 paddock journalist Matt Youson looks back at the month of August, and ponders the question: just what is going on at McLaren?

 

The 2007 F1 season should have been Ron Dennis’s Magnum Opus. Rumours suggested Ron was thinking about retirement: his shareholding in McLaren was dwindling; his legacy, The McLaren Technology Centre, was finished. He’d already moved into the big house in the country, bought a Labrador and taken up shooting. On the track everything looked good: the car was competitive; the World Champion, Fernando Alonso, had been successfully spirited away from Renault to drive it. Lewis Hamilton, Ron’s long-term project to create the perfect driver was deemed ready to take the final step, and looked like being a capable wingman for Alonso’s title push.  All Ron had to do was graciously accept the credit and the silverware, before departing to live a life of luxury. Of course it all went wrong when Lewis got too good, too quickly.

 

Motorsport encourages bitter rivalry, but it’s always the internecine squabbles that grab the attention. F1 is a funny beast, not really like any other sport. The best competitor doesn’t always win because a great driver with a mediocre car is always going to finish behind a mediocre driver with a great car. On that distinctly unlevel playing field the only metric that really matters is this: can you beat your team-mate? A team-mate is therefore also an arch-enemy, doubly so when both are fighting for the title. There have been times where the bitter rivalry has forged strong bonds of friendship, more often the reverse is true. Some of the greatest pairings have heartily despised one another. Alonso and Hamilton aren’t there yet, but there’s potential.

 

That potential showed it’s ugly side in Hungary: Alonso being investigated and ultimately punished by the stewards for impeding Hamilton’s qualifying session. Various explanations were given: Alonso alluded to a problem with his tyres, team principal Ron Dennis claims it was a strategic decision to guarantee Alonso a clear track for his final run. Driver’s impeding one another in qualifying is nothing new, it happens, and is investigated and punished every week. Team-mates impeding one another, however, is something different – giving the stewards a headache: can they penalise a driver for sitting quietly outside his own garage, especially if, as was claimed to McLaren, he was doing it under team orders? Lewis Hamilton, one presumes, had made a formal complaint – effectively putting his own team in the dock.

 

The confrontation that took place in Hungary had its genesis in Monte Carlo, way back in May. In the media glare of the post-race press conference after the Monaco Grand Prix, Hamilton dropped the smallest of suggestions that he wasn’t entirely comfortable being asked to defer to Alonso.  “I really can’t complain. It’s something I have to live with. I’ve got the number two on my car. I am the number two driver.” It was innocuous and yet ruthless: the ensuing outrage from the British media, obsessed with the notion that Lewis was being held back, made it a very uncomfortable week for McLaren’s hierarchy. The idea of Hamilton playing tail-gunner to Alonso’s championship challenge swiftly went away. The two drivers were going to have to fight it out. It’s telling that soon afterwards Alonso stopped referring to team-mate Lewis and started talking about championship rival Hamilton.

 

Alonso’s dissatisfaction at McLaren has been evident all season. During the early fly-away races his entourage let it be known that Fernando wasn’t particularly impressed with the amount of attention being lavished on Hamilton. Later in direct interviews he admitted that he was finding it hard settling at McLaren. The suggestion existed that he was the outsider while Lewis, McLaren man and boy, was fully insinuated with the team.

 

The source of Fernando’s ire seems to be the issue of equality with his team-mate. Fernando firmly believes that the best way forward is for McLaren to support him as Ferrari supported Michael Schumacher, building the team around him. He may have a point: but it isn’t going to happen. McLaren don’t think like Ferrari, and they certainly don’t operate like the Italians. Historically McLaren let their drivers scrap until one emerges the clear championship favourite, then the resources have gone into that guy. You don’t have to drag out tired 1980s Prost vs Senna analogies, Hakkinen and Coulthard operated under the same rules at the beginning of this decade.

 

Nevertheless, Alonso probably spent the 18 months before beginning his McLaren race career planning his dynasty along precisely those lines. Equality with a team-mate probably never entered his thinking, not least of all because it’s not a situation he’s ever faced: Fernando has spent the last decade comfortably dominating his team-mates, the idea there might be someone in the world as fast would be alien.

 

But it’s both real and terrible now.

 

After Hungary Alonso was refusing to commit his future to McLaren and the team left Budapest under a cloud. Fortunately for them F1 has a break in August, two weeks with no race and no testing. Tempers cooled, Hamilton and Alonso engaged in a superficial rapprochement and in Turkey the team claimed all was well. Nobody believes them, nor are they expected to.

 

With five races to go the situation is fascinating. For the first time since 1986 there’s a four-way battle at the top of the of the table. Hamilton has a slender advantage over Alonso; Massa and Raikkonen are coming up fast. In ’86 the four protagonists: Prost, Senna, Piquet and Mansell fought a battle considerably more unpleasant. Senna loathed Piquet, Piquet having suggested Senna was bisexual. The Williams pair of Piquet and Mansell also shared a mutual distaste for one-another that still resonates two decades later. Their Williams-Renaults were without a doubt the best car of the year – but they were so busy fighting each other, they allowed Alain Prost in the slow but steady McLaren to sneak through to take the championship. Ron probably remembers it well.