McLaren overhauled their driver line-up for the 2007 Formula 1 season as they gave Lewis Hamilton his debut alongside the reigning double champion Fernando Alonso.
The Woking squad refreshed their line-up 18 years ago after Kimi Raikkonen jumped ship to replace Michael Schumacher at Ferrari, having failed to win an F1 drivers’ championship for McLaren. Juan Pablo Montoya had also quit for NASCAR halfway through the 2006 season.
But McLaren signing the 2005 and 2006 champion Alonso from Renault and promoting their academy product Hamilton after he won the 2006 GP2 Series title would not work out. They would go on to share a very fractious partnership, which saw Alonso re-join Renault in 2008.
Hamilton and Alonso even both missed out on the drivers’ title to Raikkonen by only a point in the 2007 F1 season. The Finn sealed his sole crown in Sao Paulo, as Hamilton failed to win the F1 title in his rookie season after a gearbox issue in Brazil saw him only clinch a P7 finish.
Lewis Hamilton is ‘now realising’ he is not Ferrari’s favourite like Fernando Alonso did at McLaren in 2007
Emotions ran high in the McLaren garage throughout the 2007 F1 season, as well, as Alonso felt they favoured Hamilton. His sense of being wronged led to the infamous incident where Alonso blocked Hamilton in McLaren’s pit box during qualifying for the 2007 Hungarian GP.
Now, Eric Boullier thinks Hamilton is ‘realising’ at Ferrari after joining the Scuderia this year the same situation that Alonso saw at McLaren in 2007. Boullier believes the Briton knows he is not their favourite, too, with Ferrari now favouring their academy product Charles Leclerc.
READ MORE: Seven best drives of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes career before Ferrari move
Boullier even believes it is clear the 40-year-old knows he is not the cherry in the Scuderia’s eye given Hamilton’s tetchy radio messages to Ferrari race engineer Riccardo Adami. It has also been said that Hamilton has a suspicion that not everyone at Ferrari still supports him.
Boullier told RacingNews365: “I remember Fernando at McLaren in 2007, and he had the impression the team was not pushing for him because the baby of the house was Lewis.
“Lewis is now realising this at Ferrari that the baby of the house is not him, it’s Charles. We can see in his communication with his engineer that he’s struggling a bit. It’s going to take time, I guess.”
What happened between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton as McLaren teammates?
McLaren enraged Alonso by protesting him blocking Hamilton during qualifying for the 2007 Hungarian GP to the stewards, which saw the Spaniard receive a five-place grid penalty. His anger had also been growing as McLaren gave Alonso a set of used tyres on his first Q3 run.
READ MORE: Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso’s life outside F1 from net worth to Cars 2
The events at the Hungaroring only added to Alonso’s belief that McLaren wanted to favour a rookie over the double-reigning world champion. Falling out with team bosses also led to further incidents, which ultimately helped to deny Hamilton the 2007 drivers’ title, as well.
As their toxic relationship continued as the title race reached a crescendo, Motorsport.com claims that McLaren’s pit wall lost focus on Hamilton’s race at the 2007 Chinese Grand Prix as team bosses were too busy trying to ‘scupper’ Alonso’s race, as Raikkonen stole the win.
McLaren could have seen their academy product secure the title during his rookie season in Shanghai. Yet after securing pole position, Hamilton beached his car in the 2007 Chinese GP pit entry and retired as he came in to change from a set of worn wet tyres on a drying track.
The Chinese GP was the penultimate race in the 2007 F1 season and Hamilton only needed to finish within one point of Alonso and six of Raikkonen to take the title. Instead, McLaren saw his race end after Hamilton had no grip on wet tyres he had worn down to the carcass.
