Lewis Hamilton almost had a perfect rookie season in F1. He announced himself to the world by scoring a podium in his first race. Then the new McLaren driver almost won the championship in his first year, being level on points with his two-world champion teammate, Fernando Alonso.

During an interview in 2016, Hamilton gave some interesting insight into the dynamic he shared with the Spaniard back in the day.

In his interview with Graham Bensinger, Hamilton revealed that former McLaren CEO Ron Dennis told him that he was allowed to be slower than Alonso. This is due to the fact that, in 2007, Alonso was a defending two-time champion and everyone expected him to best his rookie teammate.

Talking about the past, Hamilton said, “I remember in my first year, my boss was like, don’t be surprised, you know. You’re gonna be half a second off that you know your teammate. He’s a two-time world champion, but don’t worry about it, you know.”

“And I was like, no way. Maybe he actually said it to fire me up, I don’t know. But then I nearly beat him in my first race and beat him in my 3rd race,” said Hamilton.

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Interestingly, both Hamilton and Alonso finished on the same amount of points in the 2007 season when they were teammates. But it was the young British driver who was classified ahead of his world champion teammate. He also explained how he felt after he won the championship in 2008.

Lewis Hamilton explains his feelings after the 2008 season

The British driver went on to win the championship in his second season, but that too was won in a dramatic fashion. He also revealed that he experienced some strange things while he was racing for McLaren.

“I had a lot of penalties given to me in those two years through no fault of my own. Just through some strange things that were going on in the business and almost like anything to stop me from succeeding,” said the 7-time world champion.

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The Stevenage native has achieved a lot since his defeat in the 2007 season. He has since broken almost every single record in F1 history to become arguably the most successful driver. But it is interesting to see he has continued with the same mentality since his first year in F1.