Alonso open about rivalry with Hamilton: 'We will never be friends'

Whereas Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen get along just fine, Alonso is not so good friends with his old rival Lewis Hamilton. He tells how the bitter rivalry with the Mercedes driver started and why the two will probably never be friends.

Alonso and Hamilton were teammates at McLaren in 2007, Hamilton's debut year. Soon it turned out that they were not a golden combination: the two could not get along. "We were in the same team, the same garage, we often travelled together, we were at meetings together and we started to notice that there was friction," the Spaniard said in DAZN's documentary.

The McLaren duo battled for victories and, in the process, tensions ran high. "There were a lot of things that year that disrupted the harmony. We were young, immature and we had a lot of clashes," Alonso continued. He partly blames then-team boss Ron Dennis for this.

"We had a boss who didn't know how to control the situation. This would not have happened with Flavio Briatore. Or with Lawrence Stroll," he adds. "We had too much control as drivers and nobody gave us any serious warning."

Alonso admits that not everything that happened that year came out in the open. "I think it remains under lock and key. I erased a lot of things from my memory, I would have to recall a lot of memories to go into detail. It was a difficult year, in which Hamilton and I were mostly to blame for our immaturity and lack of teamwork," he said.

These days, there is mutual respect, although there will always be some form of rivalry between the world champions. It will never come to a friendship, Alonso expects. "I don't think we will ever be friends in the future. I don't think we have many things in common," said the two-time world champion.