F1 engineers avoiding Lewis Hamilton’s car summed up McLaren mistake

Hamilton opens up on plans to remain in F1 ahead of 2023 season

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Lewis Hamilton took F1 by storm in his debut season with a sensational title duel just months after joining the grid. A mistake in China and a late Ferrari resurgence meant Hamilton missed out on the chance of equalling Nino Farina’s record of winning the Championship in a rookie season.

But, a little known secret is that McLaren engineers were desperate to avoid working with the rookie when he joined the squad in 2007. According to ex-McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley, everyone wanted to be assigned to Hamilton’s team-mate Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard had just won back-to-back titles with Renault and was one of the biggest names on the grid. Speaking to Pitlane Life Lessons podcast, Priestley has previously said: “The mechanics and engineers fought among themselves to work in Fernando’s garage.

“People didn’t want to work on Hamilton’s car, because they didn’t expect so much from him.” Hamilton secured 12 podiums and four wins in a stunning debut year.

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More incredibly, the youngster finished level on points with Alonso and only one point behind Kimi Raikkonen who went on to win the crown after a late surge. Tensions between Hamilton and Alonso eventually spiralled out of control as things turned nasty halfway through the campaign.

It came to a head at the Hungarian Grand Prix when Alonso intentionally held up Hamilton in the pits to stop him from getting a final run in Q3. Alonso eventually left the squad after just one season, returning to the Enstone-based Renault team for 2008.

Priestley previously opened up on what happened behind the scenes as relations hit boiling point.

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The TV pundit even accused Alonso’s manager of paying off Hamilton’s mechanics in a bid to back his ideas. He told the PitStop podcast: “One of Fernando’s tactics is to try and bring the whole team over to his side of the garage.

“He tries to wrestle control. There was a moment during 2007, when we had them both, where Fernando turned up at a race. I arrived and Fernando’s manager, or his trainer, is handing out little brown envelopes stuffed with cash to everybody who wasn’t on Lewis’ car.

“So his team, the support team, I was running the t-car team, we all got these little brown envelopes and I remember opening up the envelope – there was like €1,500 or something.”

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