Fernando Alonso says neither Lewis Hamilton nor Max Verstappen have been responsible for their teams’ successes: Drivers with little influence
Are Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen largely responsible for their own successes at Mercedes and Red Bull because they managed to build a team around themselves, as Michael Schumacher is always credited with at Ferrari?
The German had moved to the Scuderia in 1996, which at the time had been waiting for a world championship title since 1979. After several unsuccessful attempts at the end of the 1990s, the longed-for title finally came in 2000, which “Schumi” followed with four more and ushered in a previously unknown era of dominance.
But Fernando Alonso says: “Talk of drivers building a team is rubbish! “When Hamilton went to Mercedes, he didn’t build anything at all to be champion,” the Spaniard tells Marca newspaper.
The Englishman would have been lucky that a year after his move, the new turbo-hybrid era in Formula One kicked off and Mercedes had best prepared for it, allowing Hamilton to reap the rewards in subsequent years.
“The same is true for Max. When he came to Toro Rosso and Red Bull, Hamilton just kept winning everything,” says the Aston Martin driver. “Red Bull is not a winning team because of him, but simply another rule change after 2021 has made them win all the races now.”
As a result, Alonso says: “When everyone talks about being able to build a team around us, I don’t understand that.” According to him, technical decisions, rules or ideas in the design office would make a bigger difference than the driver’s input, his comments, personality or driving style. “
For him, therefore, there is one secret above all to success in Formula One: “You have to be in the right place at the right time.”
But that is exactly what Alonso is not said to have done in his career. When he clinched his second world championship title in 2006, many would not have expected him to be still at it 17 years later, but still standing at his two titles.
But neither his move to McLaren in 2007, his switch back to Renault in 2008, his move to Ferrari in 2010 and certainly not his second spell at McLaren from 2015 have given him a third title. This year with Aston Martin, however, he is currently third in the world championship, closer to the title than he has been since 2013 – and yet so far away, given Verstappen’s dominance.
