Qualifying Chaos Raises Stakes, Tension Within McLaren

BUDAPEST — The honeymoon is over.
The peachy, friendly, we-are-all-in-this-together atmosphere that existed between Vodafone McLaren Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso lay in shreds after the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend following a difference of opinion the pair had in qualifying.
As of the Sunday evening after the race, which Hamilton won after starting from pole and leading every lap, Alonso was not speaking to his rookie teammate.
“I hope he still speaks to me,” Hamilton said. “I am easy to get along with; I don’t hold grudges on anyone. I haven’t lost respect for him. If he doesn’t want to speak to me then that is for him to decide, but I’m open.”
McLaren’s qualifying strategy called for Alonso to go out ahead of Hamilton when the session began. Worried that Kimi Raikkonen would get out ahead of both of the McLarens if he, Hamilton, let Alonso pass, Hamilton set out ahead.
Hamilton wanted Alonso to pass him out on the track, but this was not possible because Alonso hung back.
Alonso was now one very upset driver because Hamilton had not obeyed team orders.
In the final pit stops before the final qualifying runs, Alonso came in first and the team held him for 20 seconds to get a gap in traffic. Next came a further 10-second delay. At first, Alonso said he was waiting for his engineer to count him down to when he should leave, but the steward’s inquiry revealed that Alonso was asking the team about the tire selection.
Meanwhile, Hamilton was waiting to get into the pit stall for his final set of tires. The delay was enough so that Hamilton didn’t get to make his final run.
Hamilton was incensed, and he yelled at Ron Dennis over the radio. Dennis yelled back. Tensions were high indeed.
“I thought that because of the argument I had with Ron over the radio, he was obviously angry, that perhaps he was just teaching me a lesson (in qualifying) so I just took it on the chin,” Hamilton said. “That is why when I went to the press conference I said I wouldn’t have thought Fernando would do something like that. But I have reasons to believe otherwise.”
And there you have it. Hamilton thinks that Alonso deliberately messed up his final qualifying run in retribution for Hamilton not letting Alonso go ahead at the start of final qualifying.
As for the rest of the race, Raikkonen started third in his Ferrari and grabbed second from Nick Heidfeld, who finished third in his BMW Sauber.
Alonso wound up fourth after starting sixth.
Given that McLaren wasn’t going to earn any constructors points, the team was lucky that Ferrari forget to refuel Felipe Massa’s car in qualifying.
As a result, Massa started 14th and finished 13th and out of the points.
Thus Ferrari only gained eight points on McLaren.
F-1 now heads into its summer break with no racing or testing until the Turkish Grand Prix on Aug. 26. Time, Dennis said, to let things cool off inside the frazzled McLaren team and with its drivers who are not speaking to each other.