Who I'd pick to replace Rosberg

Nine years on, here I am, typing 'Fifth Column' at the top of the screen once again, and thinking back to the last time, in December 2007.

This was the year when three drivers went to the final race to settle the world championship, and the least favoured of the trio, Kimi Raikkonen, nicked the title by a point from Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.

While Raikkonen remains Ferrari's most recent world champion, this was one of those years - as with Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson at Lotus in 1973, or Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet at Williams in '86 - when a team, in this case McLaren-Mercedes, lost the title because all season long its drivers took points from each other.

That wasn't the whole of it, mind you, for McLaren was also riven by dissension between the Hamilton and Alonso camps.

Logically Fernando, who had come to McLaren as reigning world champion, was expected to have the upper hand, but Lewis was clearly no ordinary rookie, and Jackie Stewart, ever perspicacious, saw problems ahead when we discussed the forthcoming season back then.

"Undoubtedly Alonso's the best driver in the world, and he's up against a new boy - but it's not going to be as straightforward as people are suggesting," said Stewart.

"For one thing, Hamilton's been part of the McLaren family for many years, and for another, given the amount of testing he's had, probably he's better prepared for F1 than anyone in history.

"I've no doubt that [then McLaren boss] Ron Dennis has made all kinds of promises to Alonso - but will he keep them?

"It's going to be difficult for Fernando to make his mark in the team, because the McLaren romance with Lewis is a very big one..."

Ultimately the Hamilton camp won the day, for at the end of a season pockmarked also by the 'Spygate' crisis Alonso and Dennis called time on their agreement, and Fernando returned to Renault, leaving Heikki Kovalainen to partner Lewis.

At Spa in 2008 I interviewed Hamilton, and if it went well I was taken aback by the behaviour of his father Anthony, who bounced into the room as soon as Lewis had left, demanding to know what had been said. Had we, for example, discussed... whisper it... Alonso?

Well, yes, I said, of course we had, and at that Anthony became almost hysterical: "It'll have to come out! We" [note the 'we'...] "can't talk about Alonso!" I reminded him I was a journalist, not a PR man, and left.

As time went by the animosity between the two drivers dissipated to a point that Hamilton said he considered Alonso the best. When Hamilton clinched his title in Abu Dhabi in 2014 Alonso went to Mercedes to embrace him and his family - yes, including Anthony.

Fast forward to the end of last year, to the beginning of this, and Mercedes, having unexpectedly lost the services of its new world champion, Nico Rosberg, has been casting about for a new driver. With all the top ones committed elsewhere, it has hardly been spoiled for choice.

Pascal Wehrlein, for some time a member of the Mercedes family (and managed by Toto Wolff) was a possibility, but rightly considered too inexperienced, and Valtteri Bottas (also managed by Wolff) swiftly emerged as the frontrunner.

His signing has yet to be confirmed, but Toto has said that if one of 'his' drivers were to join Mercedes he would of course sever management ties with him. Such has not always been the case, as Flavio Briatore and others can tell you.

It's a fact that Bottas has not lately been thought of as he was in the days when a Ferrari contract seemed to be looming, but he will, I fancy, prove a more competitive proposition than perhaps the Mercedes number-one driver - and, if Abu Dhabi last November be any guide, team manager - anticipates.

In their four years as team mates, after all, Hamilton may have had 32 victories to Rosberg's 22, but it was not the annihilation many had predicted.

When Rosberg announced his shock decision, immediately there began fevered speculation about his replacement. It seems to be the case these days that 'there's no such thing as a contract', but although Wolff said he wasn't keen on the complications, financial and otherwise, of bartering a driver out of an existing deal. That, in the case of Bottas and Williams, is what has proved necessary.

It was only ever a pipedream, but for me the ideal scenario would have been Alonso with Hamilton again. When this proposition was put to him, Lewis - who always thoughtfully leaves his ego where it may be easily found - shrugged if off: "I've been in a team with Alonso before, and I beat him..."

Hamilton has over time become adept at adjusting reality to suit his purpose: last time I checked, in 2007 he and Alonso each won four races and finished with 109 points apiece.

I suspect that, for all his outward insouciance, the one man Lewis would not have wished to see at Mercedes - the one man immune to intimidation, who never has off-days - was Fernando.

Would have done wonders for the TV figures, would it not?