Fernando Alonso accused of bribing team members.
All this to win the inner battle against Lewis Hamilton.
In 2007, two-time world champion Fernando Alonso came to McLaren where he became a teammate with debutante Lewis Hamilton, winner of the GP2 support class.
Hamilton made a very good opposition, stood on the podium on his Formula One debut and won a race already in May in his debut season. Their relationship evolved into Star Wars, and it hit hard both on and off the field. Among other things, Alonso prevented Hamilton from qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the result that neither of them could set the fastest lap.
The internal situation was unfortunate, and former McLaren mechanic Mark Priestley now claims that Alonso gave bribes internally. Gave contacts in brown envelopes.
Fernando’s tactic was to try to get the whole team to stay by his side in the garage. He tried to take control, Priestley tells the PitStop-Podcasts.
– In 2007, there was an occasion when Fernando’s manager or coach handed out brown envelopes with cash to everyone who didn’t belong in Lewis’s car.
Fernando Alonso accused of bribery
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– I remember when I opened the envelope, it was about 1,500 euros (15,000 kroner) in it. It was a little doubtful. At first she gets a brown envelope and says thank you, what is this? Then the coach disappears and you stand there, you open it and it’s full of cash.
Priestley says that word spread through the team.
The only ones who didn’t get anything from Fernando were Lewis’ men. Then I slowly understood what was happening. Fernando tried to get support. Priestley explains that he was trying to win people over to his side in the violent struggle that was going on.
On the one hand, you could say it was a smart tactic, but the team figured it out. We had to donate all the money to charity. It was an insight into how the two acted in different ways.
According to Priestley, Hamilton used the media to try to win the fight. In the end, the McLaren drivers missed out on the world championship title, going to Kimi Raikkonen’s race with Ferrari.
The 2007 season was difficult for McLaren, as the team was also found guilty of a spying story. A Ferrari employee provided confidential documents to a McLaren team member. This resulted in McLaren being expelled from the constructors’ championship and fined $100 million. Alonso left the team after the 2007 season, while Hamilton won the world championship with McLaren in 2008.
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In this week’s Plattan i Mattan, we’re kicking off a review of the drivers’ path to Formula 1, a little bit to give rookies a better picture of the drivers associated with the race. You can find Plattan i Mattan here.
Yesterday we also published the full calendar for F1 2023.
Welcome and have a nice Thursday.