The Observer

All season Fernando Alonso has been a man who has looked slightly out of sync with his new team. As a double world champion who commanded all that lay before him at Renault, he has found himself in an unfamiliar position in 2007.

No matter how hard McLaren has tried to give their star drivers equal billing, Lewis Hamilton has been centre of attention as he has blasted his way through his first Grands Prix.

But we witnessed a role reversal on Sunday evening in Monaco.

Now Lewis is the one who needs reassurance. From countering claims of a Hamilton bias, Ron Dennis found himself denying favouritism directed towards his Spanish star.

Instead of celebrating a seemingly unblemished, utterly dominant one-two at the most prestigious GP of them all, and toasting a landmark 150th victory, McLaren was forced to prepare itself for a media onslaught - and more seriously, an investigation by the sport's governing body regarding team orders, which have been banned for the past five years.

These are great days for McLaren. The team is flying high with a great car, a healthy championship lead and two sublime talents pushing them on each day, each week, each race.

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso © LAT

But it's a juggling act at the moment - and they could easily drop a couple of balls at any time.

In Hamilton, Alonso is facing possibly the biggest challenge of his career. He can't contain this phenomenon - he has to learn to live with it, just as Alain Prost did when Ayrton Senna joined him at McLaren.

As for Lewis, he's not interested in a supporting role to a double world champion. He has the eagerness of youth and the belief of a true talent. His time is now. The situation is poised beautifully for us. It's just fascinating.

Given the nature of his character, and the fact he is clearly so good, Hamilton's frustration in Monaco, when he didn't hold back from going public when questioned on the team 'strategy' (Ron's definition of what happened. It wasn't team orders, apparently), was understandable.

But so was the reaction of the British media, which hung the team out to dry in Monday's papers. You see, McLaren had this coming - whether they deserved it for team 'strategy' or not.

From the moment Hamilton was signed as a race driver for 2007 the rules of contact with him changed. Lewis is a down-to-earth, approachable guy, as is his father. Journalists at Autosport, who had followed him through the junior ranks and built up strong rapports with the Hamiltons, never had a problem getting hold of him for stories and quotes. Neither did the national press.

But suddenly, Lewis was off-limits. Completely. To everyone. Dennis did not want his young star distracted by the media - he had enough to deal with. Now, this wasn't good news for me, as editor-in-chief of a British weekly motor racing magazine, but I could understand and respect Ron's thinking.

He was giving this 22-year-old a golden opportunity, and he wanted to ensure he was given every chance of making the most of it. And typically, Dennis has been scrupulously fair in this policy - it's been the same rule for everyone.

But naturally, the frustration of the media has built up. The view among the press is that McLaren has mismanaged the Lewis phenomenon terribly. If they had given some access for interviews in a controlled manner, on their terms, it would not have been a great distraction to Lewis, who was clearly born to be an F1 driver and could deal with the attention anyway. And the press would have got their stories.

In Monaco, Ron denied he is protecting Lewis from the media. But that's exactly how it appears. And when they were given a perfect opportunity to slam the team for holding back Lewis, the press grabbed it. They saw an injustice and McLaren have found themselves in a storm of bad publicity.

But at Autosport, we have taken the view that what happened at the weekend has been blown up out of proportion.

The McLarens of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in Rascasse © LAT

Of course, as racing fanatics we would rather have seen Alonso and Hamilton let off the leash to go at it hammer and tongs around the great street track. If they took each other off, well, that's what happens sometimes in racing. And a Lewis maiden victory, at Monaco of all places, would clearly have been fantastic - especially if it had been earned in battle with Alonso.

But let's be realistic. F1 teams have too much to lose to let them go for it in these circumstances. They have to play the long game. When McLaren had such a performance advantage, why should they risk losing a win and a one-two? Monaco is the toughest circuit in F1 to actually race on and the chances of losing one or both cars would have been high.

As for team orders, well, they have always been a part of motor racing and history is littered with examples, from Mercedes in the 1950s to Lotus in 1978 to Ferrari in 1982 - and McLaren in various different eras.

Working as a team for the benefit of the greater good is part of the sport. Dennis has always spoken about his belief in letting his drivers race, and most of the time he has kept to that. I wouldn't imagine he made his decision at Monaco without some regret. But he felt he had to do it ¬- and I can see why.

Of course, the way it has worked out is that it has offered some appeasement to Alonso, some proof that this team is not biased in favour of his young team-mate. That is useful for the harmony of the team, although the see-saw effect leaves Dennis with the job of dealing with a disappointed Hamilton.

But Lewis has to get over it, as I'm sure he will. He is still a rookie with just five GP starts to his name, and understands fully that he has to play the team game. Even though what he has achieved in the past few months is incredible, he is still raw. That was highlighted at Monaco where he looked on the ragged edge throughout the weekend. You could see Alonso's experience in comparison.

What hurts is that Lewis was quicker than his team-mate. If he hadn't been unintentionally slowed by Mark Webber in qualifying, he would have been on pole.

And this is the important point to remember: Lewis would probably have won the race from that position - and McLaren would not have tried to stop him.

But through his experience, and with a little bit of fortune, Alonso put himself in the position to lead the team in Monaco. All McLaren did was to thwart fears of vulnerability from possible safety car periods and being leapfrogged by the one-stoppers by holding formation. What they didn't do was ask either driver to give up a position.

And that's a long way from what Ferrari did in Austria in 2002. On that occasion Rubens Barrichello fairly and squarely had Michael Schumacher beaten - and yet he was told to hand the win to his team-mate without a second thought.

Michael Schumacher passes Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello on the final lap to win the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix © LAT

That showed a complete lack of respect for the sport, its fans and for Barrichello himself. What Ron Dennis ordered at Monaco did not.

But he must have known he was risking an investigation by the FIA. It's a relief that the team is not facing punishment - because they don't deserve it.

Let's just move on to Canada, where Hamilton will have every opportunity to deliver that first win, and we can get back to the really intriguing stuff that has made this season so gripping.

And what I want to know is, will Ferrari - and more specifically, Kimi Raikkonen - bounce back from the serious body blow McLaren dealt them in Monaco? Kimi's qualifying cock-up and Ferrari's clear defeat: those were the real shocks of Monaco 2007.