“He was always playing catch up,” Heikki Kovalainen feels Fernando Alonso has suffered ever since his time at McLaren with Lewis Hamilton
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Fernando Alonso
Heikki Kovalainen an ex-Formula One racer has recently given his view on Fernando Alonso’s F1 career and believes that Fernando was never able to recover from being Lewis Hamilton’s teammate.
Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were teammates at McLaren in 2007 and that was the only year when the duo made a partnership in their respective careers.
Alonso had an up and down 2007 season at McLaren where he finished level on point with his rookie teammate Hamilton by scoring 109 points, after the season Alonso’s contract with the team was revoked by mutual consent and the Spaniard joined Renault.
Alonso’s team decisions since then have come under question and in 2015 Alonso joined McLaren from Ferrari which raise quite a few eyebrows.
Heikki Kovalainen wonders if such wrong decisions can all be traced back to that season with Hamilton and the shock factor of the pace that the rookie showed.
“Since [Alonso’s] championship years with Renault, he’s always made the wrong move and just sometimes I wonder if the trigger was the surprise of Hamilton’s speed,”
“If that is the core issue, then the falling out with [McLaren boss] Ron Dennis and with the team followed and there wasn’t any other place to go, Renault was kind of on a downward slope, he was just playing catch up after that and that never really recovered.”
Heikki Kovalainen himself has first-hand experience of being Lewis Hamilton’s teammate
Kovalainen has recently shared his experience of being Lewis Hamilton’s teammate and has indicated how tough it is to keep up with the seven-time Formula One World Champion.
While talking about his stint as Hamilton’s teammate Heikki Kovalainen has said, “Occasionally I could match him but over the full season I had to stretch every session to match him.”
“You can only do so much stretching and then you run out of energy and that was the case with me, I didn’t have enough margin in my capacity to do the times and the races that he did, so it was not easy.“
The only driver who so far has been able to get the better of Lewis Hamilton has been Nico Rosberg who was able to snatch the 2016 drivers championship away from Hamilton.
After looking at what Heikki Kovalainen has said about Hamilton, it seems to be Hamilton’s partner really takes a toll on a person and it is not easy to do impressive seasons on a regular basis with him around. Hence Kovalainen believes Alonso has not been able to fully recover from being Hamilton’s teammate.
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Rishabh Negi
(3244 Articles Published)