Alonso and McLaren: why it didn't work

Picture the scene: a young kartist indulged by his dad, still at junior school but with dreams of Formula 1 in some far-away future, of when he will work with the same team for which his hero Ayrton Senna drives now. He's a brilliant little driver, the desire of the devil, the touch of an angel, and he duly wins yet another race. As the beaming proud father goes to greet him, the boy asks in sweet wide-eyed innocence: "Has Ron Dennis called yet?"

Lewis Hamilton? No, Fernando Alonso. The idea of the little kid driving his heart out in a faraway province of Spain thinking he was being monitored by Ron Dennis, who won't even have known he existed, is a touching one.

Fast-forward 18 years and the young kid was now F1's best driver joining arguably F1's best team. That was what Alonso's deal with McLaren-Mercedes represented when it was done at the end of 2005, effective from the beginning of '07. "You guys are so good at developing your car," Fernando said to Dennis in admiration as he stood waiting to go onto the podium in Brazil '05, McLaren having just finished one-two, Alonso having just driven his Renault to his first title.

It was the motor racing equivalent of the casual conversation at a bar, borne of mutual attraction. But it led to a disastrous place. Just two years later they stand surveying the wreckage of their failed marriage, each holding a decree nisi from an acrimonious divorce. Both parties have come out of the experience weakened and hurt.

Travelling out to the Japan/China leg of this year's championship, I watched a documentary about McLaren filmed pre-season. There's a part in it where Alonso makes his first appearance at the factory and is introduced to the workforce by a proud Dennis, who talks of the remarkable qualities Alonso has as a human being and a gentleman, in addition to those as a driver. Sitting on the plane in September it was difficult to comprehend that this honeymoon period was so recent, given the poison that now resided in their relationship.

Alonso and Hamilton, team-mates in 2007 © LAT

In looking at where it all went wrong, it's impossible to see past the phenomenon that is Lewis Hamilton. The rookie's performances were so unbelievably strong that they revealed a weakness in Alonso never previously suspected - to those outside the Renault team at least.

One theory is that his self-belief is so total that it does not compute when someone in the same car outperforms him and this sends him haywire. A contrasting theory is that it's the lack of self-belief that has driven his behaviour this year. Still others say he lacks sophistication in his thinking, leading him to wrong conclusions, something not helped by many of those around him not coming from long motor racing backgrounds. Whatever the reasons, he simply cannot handle having a team-mate compete with him.

As the situation developed through the season there were knowing nods at Renault. For they already knew just how extreme his reactions could be when a team-mate outperformed him. It hadn't happened very often there, paired as he was with Giancarlo Fisichella. But when it had, he'd freaked. They still recalled the torrent of abuse he'd given them on the slowing-down lap at Indy in '06 after he'd finished an off-the-pace fifth, with Fisi third.

The outside world got a clue with his infamous 'I feel alone' speech in Japan in reference to the previous race in China. He'd not got the Schumacher-Ferrari treatment in his fight for the title was the gist of his gripe. Outside of Renault, it was put down to a bit of championship tension. Inside, it was viewed as just another one of his outbursts.

And that's the thing with the Renault team; it's fabulously informal and relaxed while managing to stay totally performance-oriented. An outburst from a highly-strung driver is viewed as exactly that. He brings performance to the equation, so he's forgiven. But he's never indulged. This is the same unit of down-to-earth, racing-hardened and brilliantly disciplined blokes that once locked Jean Alesi in the truck when his Sicilian temperament got the better of him.

This sort of stuff is water off a duck's back to them. Only underperformance gets them upset and Alonso never did that. As a great racer with an uncomplicated approach, he was hugely popular there and his occasional tantrums meant little. He could relax and be himself there, secure within a team he could feel liked him.

Things were rather different at McLaren - and it's surprising Alonso didn't seem to understand this before he went there. He'd spent five years at Renault, living in Oxford, being on the inside of F1, hearing all the talk, socialising with the mechanics and engineers.

Alonso had a strained relationship with Dennis © LAT

How could he not have picked up on the fact that McLaren is a bigger, more complex, mechanistic, system-driven team, conceived in the image of its boss Ron Dennis? How could he believe he could go there and become part of the fabric of the team in the same way he had at Renault? Maybe he still had the idealised childhood image of the team for which his hero Senna drove. Maybe he thought it didn't matter the culture was going to be different - just so long as they provided him with a fast car.

He went into that deal with huge confidence, fresh from becoming the youngest world champion, from beating Schumacher. By the time he went there, he was even more so, having bagged a second consecutive crown - and this time beaten Schumacher in a fast car. When he did the deal he had no way of knowing who his team-mate was going to be, but such was his confidence he probably didn't much care. From a guy who had ended F1's Schumacher era, what did it matter?

Dennis felt just as confident about Alonso's ability as Fernando himself, and no doubt painted a beautiful picture of mutual success, with the huge resources of the mighty McLaren-Mercedes partnership producing world- beating cars that would take him to an entirely new level of success. He will have made Alonso feel good about his decision - and there was no reason to believe it wouldn't turn out to be an accurate picture.

Dennis was apparently getting a driver with all of Kimi Raikkonen's speed, but more application - and a quiet and settled off-track life that wouldn't embarrass the team or its partners. Even Alonso stops short of claiming he was offered clear number one status - McLaren never does that. But with Raikkonen already being linked with Ferrari, it was a fair assumption that this would be the role Alonso would de facto fall into.

Alonso's place in the team enabled Dennis to take the risk of putting the rookie Hamilton in the other car. No problem, thought Alonso - until he then began to see how much a part of the team Lewis was. He might have been a rookie but he'd been part of this team for a decade - and Alonso's hyper-sensitive antenna went up.

Because beneath the bravado and confidence, there lurks paranoia. From a humble background, with his father's help he made it through the ranks of the sport against the odds. Whether it is this that has lent both men a guarded element to their personalities, always looking where the next ambush might be coming from, isn't known. Those who've known them since the early days say it was always there.

Some of it is the sheer defiance that has doubtless helped him to progress, but with it comes suspicion, rancour and vengefulness. Fernando conducts himself in a proud way, but that pride is easily hurt. There have been suggestions that it's a cultural trait, but a Spanish racing insider insists not: "I wouldn't say cultural, no. You do not see these sorts of traits with Pedro de la Rosa, for example. It's more about his own personality.

Alonso believed McLaren threw the championship away © LAT

"He's a charming guy up close, is funny and charismatic, and he doesn't lack intelligence. But I think he lacks wisdom. His views are maybe a bit simplistic. This is a guy who didn't really finish his education, once he began to be successful in his career - and he's not from a place like Barcelona or Madrid. I think he hasn't properly understood the wider dimension of his success and really hasn't accommodated the realities of the environment he's in."

It's a view his former manager Flavio Briatore goes along with: "We overestimate drivers," he says. "They are 20, 25 years old and we expect them to always behave like mature persons. We must take the human aspect more into consideration. They fall into situations that are bigger than them and sometimes we don't help them."

This was the background to the guy who began testing as the double world champion - and had little respect for the rookie Hamilton. At first he was dismissive. After Lewis's big Valencia testing accident when trying to match Alonso's pace, he told local reporters he couldn't see why McLaren had signed this guy as he wasn't especially fast.

He totally underestimated Hamilton at the start. This lasted into the first three races. This lack of respect for Hamilton's level made it extra difficult to accept when the rookie rivalled his speed - as he did immediately.

When Alonso had to sacrifice a set of new tyres by making a second run in Q2 in Melbourne in order to beat Hamilton's time and thereby ensure strategic preference in the race, he was irritated he'd had to do so. He was the double champion, the team should be ensuring they beat all the others by backing him, their best bet. Now he'd wasted a valuable bit of ammunition just to see off his team-mate.

Post-race in Melbourne Alonso was asked how he felt about having a team-mate who was clearly going to give him a fight through the season. "I disagree with you there," he said. "I have in the past had Fisichella have a more successful start to the season than me but he was not close by the end of the season and this is all we are seeing here." This was a view perhaps reinforced by his perfect victory in Malaysia, with Hamilton playing the part of his rear gunner against the Ferraris.

But then came a sound trouncing by Hamilton in Bahrain - and Alonso's responses to any Hamilton questions didn't bother to conceal his irritation. It all points to a serious underestimation of his rival. His apparent inability to then understand that McLaren was not about to favour him further suggests he knew little of the team's history. This was a team that prided itself on material equality. There was no way McLaren was going to favour either one of them in terms of equipment or strategy.

Raikkonen benefited from McLaren's problems © LAT

But the non-material aspects of equality - the feeling and ambience - were not well calculated to put Alonso at ease. For all that McLaren is probably the very best team at providing equal equipment, it's possibly the worst in how it deals with the human aspects. For one thing, Alonso felt they were too visibly joyous about Hamilton's success. This irritated him greatly. For another, Dennis's well-meaning but clumsily heavy-handed and belated attempts at showing him support just made matters worse.

After a paternalistic chat from Ron in the Bahrain paddock, Alonso told Spanish journalists he felt condescended to. Paternalism was catastrophically the wrong approach here; Alonso needed to feel an equal partner in success, not a little boy. That might be okay for 'the other one', but it wasn't for him. At around this time, when a magazine got each driver to do a portrait of their team-mate, Alonso's drawing of Hamilton had the word 'boy' emblazoned on the collar of his overalls.

This was where Alonso's head was at and in Spain and Canada it resulted in desperate pressure errors. In between came a faultless victory in Monaco but if ever he had any doubts about Hamilton's true level, they were surely demolished here. Deep down, Alonso knew that only circumstances outside his control had unfolded in his favour and not Hamilton's to give him the victory.

But in the aftermath of Hamilton's angry comments about how he was contained by the team in Monaco, Alonso was irritated the team had not pointed out that he too had been brought in early for his second pitstop. It was from this point that the relationship deteriorated badly. By the time of his superb victory at the Nurburgring Alonso was not even acknowledging Dennis's presence. Some might call that uncompromising. More realistic people would call it churlish and immature.

The relationship may yet have been recoverable. But then came Hungary. Forget 'pitlanegate'. The catastrophic part of Alonso's weekend - perhaps the most catastrophic move of his career - came the next morning. His idea of using the incriminating contents of his laptop as a lever to get Dennis to slow Hamilton down was incredibly naive. What possible outcome was going to unfold once he had done that? Did he seriously believe that Dennis was going to be prepared to be held to ransom like that?

From that moment Alonso's McLaren career was doomed, even if he didn't realise it. Characteristically, he then produced some of his most magnificent performances. Feeling he was performing alone within the team and against the odds brought out his absolute best on-track and at Monza and Spa Hamilton had absolutely no answer to him.

The little Spanish boy grew to see out his dreams, including the one about driving for McLaren. But it turned horribly sour. And just to make it even more galling, the root of the trouble was the performance of the guy on the other side of the team garage - a driver who for 10 years had benefited from the very dream partnership that the schoolboy Alonso had unrealistically craved. His dream had been stolen.

The breakdown in the relationship between Alonso and McLaren was about much more adult matters than that. But in a sport that's all about the chasing of childhood dreams, how far removed did Alonso ever get from the emotion of how circumstance betrayed him, even mocked him? Ron Dennis never did call when he was a boy. He called another boy instead.

Or maybe, in the end, three is just one too many for a marriage.