McLaren's Feud Gets Uncorked

Lewis Hamilton won, but he's now in open conflict with McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso. By MARK HUGHES

There can come a time when a driver's and his team's aspirations conflict. And if that driver has the right stuff, the warrior qualities of a true champion, he won't even blink in deciding which priority to serve.

It's not pretty. In fact, it's brutal. But Fernando Alonso has this quality. This much we have known for some time. But we now also know for certain what we thought we detected in Monaco - that Lewis Hamilton has it in equal measure. Which has left McLaren and Ron Dennis with a major-league headache that threatens to eclipse even the one they suffered at the hands of the Senna/Prost combination.

Hamilton delivered a technically perfect drive on Sunday at the Hungaroring to take his third grand prix victory under the biggest pressure imaginable. It was a pressure greater even than that of Kimi Raikkonen filling his mirrors with flying scarlet for almost the entire distance.

It was the pressure of delivering while in the very midst of falling out with Dennis in the horrible, awkward crossover moment where the team protege had, if necessary, to show he was prepared to go to war with the team that made him.

Alonso reached a similar state of non-compliance for different reasons - back around Monaco time, in fact. When is a driver more than an employee? Very rarely. He needs to be good enough - and very few are. Beyond that, his competitive desire needs to be so overwhelming that he risks alienation in the team unless he's given his way and treated as a partner.

"We are totally committed to equality, and this team will never operate in any other way," said Dennis, painting himself into a corner. Because, with the ruthless competitive intensity - not to mention awesome ability - of Alonso and Hamilton in the same team, there can never be equilibrium.

The only equality they'll accept is with the team, not a team-mate. Operating out there on the edge, where there is peace there is no truth, where there's truth there is no peace.

"I went into the race with a big cloud in my mind," Lewis admitted. "You don't know whether the team hates you or who they blamed in the situation. I just tried to keep smiling and remain positive, to keep the same as always. I went round the whole team.

"I apologised if they felt I'd done something against them and they all said good luck. There was only one person who didn't. Ron wasn't happy yesterday, but I told him my views and he respected them. 'It's part of your personality,' he said. We came to a mutual understanding and started with a clean slate today."

In his reaction against the punishment his team had tried to mete out to him for refusing to obey an instruction during qualifying, Hamilton had helped trigger the situation that led the race stewards to penalise Alonso five grid places - and deprive McLaren of any constructors' points. At the most horribly awkward time for the team too, with the spectre of the FIA court of appeal hearing about Stepneygate hanging over their heads.

But that wasn't Hamilton's problem. And if that attitude infuriated Dennis - the man largely responsible for Hamilton's career - then so be it. Hamilton couldn't let any debt of gratitude stand in his way; he has a world championship to win.

Just as in Monaco, he felt he was the faster man and was damned if he wasn't going to prove that. But this time he was no longer a sparkling rookie looking for his first race win. He was an established winner looking to protect his recently-narrowed world championship lead at a critical stage in the season.

Alonso had ruthlessly used Dennis's stated commitment to equality to insist he got his way on Saturday, knowing that would hinder Hamilton. Lewis in turn was more than prepared to react to that to get what he needed - though in the event the stewards did it on his behalf.

So Alonso started sixth and, at a dry Hungaroring, that was always going to define his chances as limited, and allow Hamilton to escape out of his reach.

Hamilton sprang to an immediate lead, with Raikkonen using the cleaner side of the grid in his Ferrari to out-accelerate Nick Heidfeld's BMW for second. Alonso, meanwhile, was cautious after his initially fast start was baulked aggressively by Nico Rosberg in the Williams, leaving him sixth into the first corner.

Anxious not to tag Ralf Schumacher's Toyota, Alonso was then passed around the outside by Robert Kubica's BMW.

Hamilton had already crossed the line 1.6sec clear - ahead of Raikkonen, Heidfeld, Rosberg and Schumacher at the end of the first lap - as Alonso was trying to tuck tight up to Kubica through the final turn. But he ran out wide onto the dust, obliging him to lift and allowing Mark Webber's Red Bull to nip by.

Compromised onto the pit straight, it was all Alonso could do to ruthlessly keep Heikki Kovalainen at bay into the first turn. Kovalainen nudged him up the rear, punching a small hole in the nose of the Renault.

The Renault's grip was enhanced by the team's choice to start with the super-soft Bridgestones on both cars, in contrast to everyone else.

It seemed a brave choice after these tyres had grained spectacularly on the green track of Friday and Saturday. But with a track temperature in the high 30s and blue skies beyond even the distant mountains, there was every chance the track would come to them.

By the fifth lap Hamilton had built up his lead over Raikkonen to 3.5sec, but that was as big as the gap would get before Kimi was able to peg it, these two pulling easily clear of Heidfeld and the rest. As it turned out, Lewis and Kimi were carrying the same amount of fuel, so demonstrating that, once into its stride, with the front tyres fully warmed, the Ferrari was genuinely McLaren-quick.

It was only its inability to use those tyres hard enough in qualifying that had left it trailing. "It's a problem we have seen before on this type of [tight] track," said Raikkonen, in reference to Monaco, "but I expect we will hit back on the more normal tracks."

The other Ferrari of Felipe Massa was in no position to help, mired in the midfield where it had qualified after the team's non-refuelling error. To compound matters Felipe, in attempting to pass Alex Wurz's Williams, had run wide and clattered over the turn four kerbs on the opening lap, this allowing Takuma Sato to demote him down to 16th.

Massa would be stuck behind the Super Aguri for the rest of the first stint. Loaded to the gills with fuel, he had no way of making progress. "It was the worst race of my career," he lamented after trailing home a dejected 13th. His world title hopes now look slim.

Alonso repassed Webber into turn one at the beginning of the third lap and picked off Kubica there a lap later to go sixth. But he was already 11sec away from the lead, and falling, as Schumacher defended fifth hard. This lost Alonso around 1.5sec per lap to the Hamilton/Raikkonen fight.

From the sixth lap Raikkonen began to gradually nibble into Hamilton's lead, the pair stretching themselves, Kimi usually fastest in sector one, Lewis with the edge in the middle sector, generally equal in the final one. They were each pushing like crazy as the first stops loomed, Hamilton determined to break Raikkonen's challenge.

On lap 13 he upped his pace by over 0.5sec to set the fastest lap of the race so far. Raikkonen was desperate to stay with him, to be within range and ready to take advantage of what he hoped would be a later stop, but as he tried to go with the McLaren he ran wide at the penultimate turn and out onto the dust.

His tyre grip thus compromised, he suffered a further moment at the final turn, and a 3sec gap was suddenly back out to 4.6sec. For now, Hamilton had reasserted his authority on this race.

The only hope for Raikkonen was that he was going to run longer than Hamilton to the first stop: although the McLaren's hard working of its tyres had helped give the team a qualifying and early-race advantage, Kimi was hoping that late in the stint it would mean a drop-off in performance.

It was a forlorn hope on both counts. The McLaren was fuelled just as long, and its pace didn't really drop off. They each pitted at the end of lap 19. Without the option of being able to respond to how long Hamilton was refuelled, Ferrari was committed to its planned second-stint duration - and it turned out to be shorter than Hamilton's.

The McLaren was stationary for 9.7sec (enough for 30 laps), the Ferrari for 8.6sec (enough for 26). There was now no chance of Raikkonen ?leapfrogging ahead at the final stops. All Ferrari could do was hope Hamilton encountered some sort of problem. Actually, he did. Meantime, Alonso had pitted at the end of lap 17, still having been unable to breach the defences of Schumacher's Toyota.

Ralf stopped a lap later and emerged still ahead of the McLaren, consigning Alonso to another trapped stint. In fact, these two were effectively racing Heidfeld too, but the BMW was on a three-stopper to their two - the two strategies were very evenly matched if you could run up front and find the right gap.

It turned out that Heidfeld's crew was only just able to do this. Had Ralf been able to run just one lap longer to the first stops, he would have cleared Nick and spoiled the BMW's strategy. The threat to Heidfeld's third then became Alonso, because the McLaren had been fuelled longer than Schumacher to the second stops - and BMW therefore knew the champion would leapfrog the Toyota.

The challenge was then for Nick to build up a big enough gap to allow him to exit his third stop still in front of the group. "It wasn't easy racing a ghost," said Heidfeld, who had also lost sight of the two leaders ahead of him. "I knew we were racing Fernando, but because of the different strategies he wasn't visible."

BMW's choice of running three stops for both its cars was based on difficulties with the softer tyre in practice. The team wanted therefore to minimise time spent on it, with its use limited to a short final stint.

Williams had opted for a similar strategy for Rosberg, as had Red Bull for Webber. Rosberg, Kubica and Webber were effectively racing each other just behind the Heidfeld/Schumacher/Alonso group. The three-stoppers stayed in this order through their second stints, but Rosberg's short middle stint dropped him behind Kubica after each had stopped a second time.

This sprang Kubica free to attack the two-stopping Ralf, an attack that was ultimately (just) successful and netted the Pole fifth place. This was a good recovery from Kubica after his qualifying difficulties, especially so as he kept the same set of front tyres on for the first two stints. Webber would be left to be leapfrogged by the two-stopping Kovalainen for the final point, Heikki driving another impressive race in the Renault, its super-softs holding up well enough for Renault to use a set in the middle stint too.

"Yes, the track conditions and the temperatures came to the super-soft perfectly," said Bridgestone's Kees van der Grint. "Looking at it afterwards, it's clear that it was actually a quicker tyre even over a stint. I'm surprised more teams didn't use it for their middle stint once they'd seen how consistent the Renault had been."

Up at the front, the Hamilton/Raikkonen battle continued. Into the second stint Kimi was quicker. Some of the margin was to be expected given that he was four laps lighter, but it was more than that. "Yes, early in the second stint my steering wheel suddenly was offset to the right," reported Hamilton.

"It wasn't a comfortable feeling as it felt a bit like [in qualifying] at the Nurburgring. I decided to stay off the kerbs just in case. It was very hard work, especially in right-handers. Eventually the team came on the radio and said it wasn't really a problem, that it wasn't going to break. But still it affected me."

The car's front brakes also began locking up much more readily than before: "The whole front end just felt very different to what it was in the first stint and it became extremely difficult to drive." And so Raikkonen closed in until, by the 28th lap, the gap was almost gone.

Catching was one thing, passing something else. At no stage did Kimi look like trying to put a move on the McLaren: "We were just too close in performance. I wasn't going to try anything risky. I just pushed hard to try to make him make a mistake but nothing happened. Because our car only really started working properly three or four laps into a stint, it meant we were not where we needed to be.

"The only chance was to have been able to have run longer to the first stops, but it's just guessing what the other team will do, and we didn't guess right. That's the only way we might have been able to win."

Hamilton went into safe mode, just played defensive, ignored the red thing that would be big in his mirrors for pretty much the rest of the race: "I just concentrated on managing my tyres. We knew we were running longer to the second stops, so it was important that I still had the performance in my tyres after he pitted, so that I could take advantage of stopping later."

He'd kept calm, contained the damage, established that this was still a winnable race. And thanked his lucky stars that passing at the Hungaroring is next to impossible in the dry. Raikkonen pitted on lap 45, giving him a final stint of 25 laps.

Hamilton used his four low-fuel laps to good effect, the last of them just a tenth slower than his best, set when the car was fully healthy. He rejoined over 4sec in front, but again Kimi was quickly able to close that down, both cars now on the super-soft tyres.

"I just concentrated on getting good exits," explained Hamilton on the art of soaking up the pressure and not leaving any gaps in the defences. Hamilton had not long left the McLaren pits when Alonso arrived there for his final stop, his extra low-fuel lap over Schumacher's Toyota finally getting him ahead.

Heidfeld made his third and final stop five laps later, and exited just ahead of the champion's visibly faster McLaren. No longer was Nick racing a ghost. It was there, real as silver-and-red, all over his rear wing.

Alonso was not up for accepting that passing was nearly impossible, and suffered several trips across the asphalt run-offs as he desperately tried to get a run on the BMW.

"He had better pace and I decided not to push too hard on the super-soft tyres," explained Nick, "just to be kind to them, knowing that it's hard for him to overtake here. He pushed pretty hard for a couple of laps, then backed off, then tried again. You can never be sure with him, but I was fairly sure I had him covered."

He did indeed, and took his second podium of the year.Raikkonen set fastest lap of the race on his final tour - but it wasn't enough. In taking win number three Hamilton extended his lead over Alonso to seven points - and over Raikkonen to 20.

"That was one of the hardest races of my career," he claimed. It was also quite possibly his coolest.