Fernando Alonso “completely underestimated” Lewis Hamilton ahead of their single season as McLaren F1 team-mates in 2007.

That is the belief of former Red Bull and McLaren driver David Coulthard, who says the pair “fell out” pretty quickly after Alonso discovered that he would not receive preferential treatment over Hamilton.

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton ‘fell out pretty early’

Alonso and Hamilton spent a year as McLaren team-mates in 2007 in one of the most explosive seasons in F1 history.

The pair finished on level on 109 points with four wins apiece as both Hamilton and Alonso missed out on the title by a single point to Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

McLaren, meanwhile, were disqualified from the Constructors’ Championship and fined a record $100million after being engulfed in the ‘Spygate’ scandal.

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Alonso arrived at McLaren as F1’s reigning two-time World Champion having signed a contract to join the team at the end of his first title-winning campaign with Renault in 2005.

Hamilton, a graduate of McLaren’s driver academy, was signed as Alonso’s team-mate after winning the GP2 (now F2) junior title at the end of 2006.

Appearing on the Red Flags podcast, Coulthard claimed that Alonso and Hamilton “fell out” quickly because the World Champion assumed that he was entitled to preferential treatment at McLaren in 2007.

And he revealed that Alonso asked McLaren boss Ron Dennis if he had given up on winning the Constructors’ Championship when informed of the signing of a 22-year-old Hamilton.

Coulthard said: “They fell out pretty early because Alonso thought he’d signed a number-one contract.

“And then, apparently, when Ron told him that it would be Lewis in the other car, he’d said to him: ‘What, you don’t want to win the Constructors’ [title]?’

“He completely underestimated Lewis’s potential.

“Anyone who’d seen Lewis from karting all the way through the lower formulae knew he was special.

“You can never tell how they deliver in Formula 1 because that is the biggest challenge.

“Some guys who are average in F2 or Formula 3000, as it was in my day, do an exceptional job in Formula 1 and vice versa.

“Formula 1 is the only place you can really judge talent. Everyone who gets super excited about karting world champions and Formula 3 champions [are misguided].

“There’s a number of drivers in F1 who won F3 [or] F2 and they’re pretty average in Formula 1.”

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No fewer than six rookies are on the F1 2025 grid with Andrea Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), Oliver Bearman (Haas), Jack Doohan (Alpine), Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) and Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) all commencing their first full seasons.

Bortoleto, the 2024 F2 champion, is managed by Alonso, while Lawson has already suffered a blow by being demoted from Red Bull’s senior team after just two races of the new season.

Coulthard explained that it is difficult to judge a driver’s overall potential until their reach F1 with the demands of racing in the pinnacle of motorsport offering a unique test of their credentials.

He said: “Formula 1 is just such a different [challenge].

“It’s not just about driving race cars. It’s the whole media scrum. It’s the partners, the sponsors, the fans.

“It’s so far and away different, the job of being a grand prix driver.

“When you’re in the lower formulae, it’s your parents and a benefactor who’s turning up to watch you. There’s no real media value in the lower formulae that would be significant for any sponsor to be involved.

“It’s Formula 1 or nothing when it comes to the global partners and the spotlight of interest.

“[Nobody’s] talking about the guy who’s just won GB4 or Formula 3, because there’s no guarantee they’re ever going to make Formula 2, never mind Formula 1.”

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