Fernando Alonso Resorted to “Little Brown Envelopes of Cash” to Defeat Lewis Hamilton at McLaren F1

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were teammates at McLaren in 2007. However, they share a relationship far from what can be called ‘friendly’. It reached a point where Alonso did something that can best be described as ‘bizarre’.

In a podcast interview, former McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley revealed how things went at McLaren that season. He even spilled the beans on how far Alonso went to pip Hamilton.

Tussle at McLaren and Alonso’s antics

Fernando Alonso joined McLaren in 2007 after winning two back-to-back championships with Renault. It was the same year when a rookie Lewis Hamilton landed a seat on the same team. The relationship was supposed to be a master-apprentice relationship. It turned out to be the start of one of the greatest sporting rivalries of the modern Formula 1 era. While Lewis expressed his animosity towards Alonso in press conferences and interviews, Alonso had a pretty unconventional approach.

In a podcast on the YouTube channel, PitStop, Marc Priestley revealed, “one of Fernando’s tactics is to try and bring the whole team to his side of the garage”. He continued, “and Fernando’s manager or his trainer, he’s handing out little brown envelopes, stuffed with cash, to everybody who wasn’t on Lewis’ car.” When asked about how much cash it contained by one of the podcast hosts, Marc replied, “like 1500 Euros or something”.

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Both drivers took digs at each other’s driving style, accusing each other of being too aggressive. While the friction between the two drivers who share 9 championship titles among themselves was much high back then, it seems to have mellowed down with time.

Alonso-Hamilton rivalry over the years

In Formula 1, your teammate is your biggest competitor. That being said, a rookie driver is expected to play second fiddle to the experienced driver. Especially when that experienced driver is coming off of back-to-back championship wins. Lewis Hamilton did not believe in any of that. He was there to race. And race he did, sometimes defying the team orders. The rivalry cost them dearly when they both scored the same number of points and lost the championship to Kimi Raikkonen by just 1 point. In the year that followed, the Spaniard switched back to Renault. Lewis, who stayed back at McLaren, won the 2008 drivers’ championship. Since then, Hamilton has gone on to win the championship 6 more times while Alonso could only come close to winning twice. The rivalry seems to have calmed down given Lewis’ run over the years in a much more dominant car than Alonso.

We saw the revival of this rivalry this year when the two crashed at Spa in the opening lap. A war of words ensued briefly afterward. Calling the Mercedes driver “an idiot” the Aston Martin driver said, “this guy only knows how to drive and start in first”. Hamilton, however, admitted guilt after looking at the replays, saying, “It is my fault” The Spaniard later admitted to having gone too far in his criticism of Lewis and praised his accolades. He said, “I apologize. I was not thinking what I said.” In a rare show of admiration for Lewis, he called him a “legend of our time”.

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Seems like the two legends of the sport have made peace with each other. Maybe it’s the experience over the years that has calmed them down. Or who knows, maybe we’re just another incident away from the refueling of the fire.