Fernando Alonso wanted McLaren to prevent Lewis Hamilton from accessing his telemetry data during their increasingly bitter 2007 Formula 1 rivalry, according to former McLaren race engineer Mark Slade. Nearly two decades later, Slade has revealed new details about a request that illustrated just how badly relations between the two drivers had deteriorated even before their infamous clash at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Mark Slade was Fernando Alonso’s race engineer during the Spaniard’s only season with McLaren and discussed the episode during an interview on Peter Windsor’s podcast. His account adds another previously little-known chapter to one of the most intense team-mate rivalries in McLaren’s Formula 1 history.
Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton tensions were already rising before Hungary
Nineteen years have passed since the dramatic Budapest weekend when the tension between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton finally became public during qualifying for the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix. From that point onwards, McLaren struggled to contain the situation. Lewis Hamilton eventually finished second in the Drivers’ Championship, with Fernando Alonso third, before the two-time world champion left the team at the end of the season.
Fernando Alonso has repeatedly given his own account of what happened in Hungary. Speaking later in comments reported by Marca, he said: “Nobody listened to my version. I said that I never stopped anyone. They simply gave me old tyres while I was running in qualifying.”
The Budapest controversy, however, was not where the difficulties between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton began. Mark Slade says the relationship had already deteriorated significantly before then, with a particularly revealing episode taking place around the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
It is not the first unusual detail Slade has revealed about that turbulent campaign. The former McLaren engineer has also previously discussed the 2007 controversy involving cash envelopes Fernando Alonso gave to members of his McLaren crew.
Fernando Alonso asked McLaren to restrict Lewis Hamilton’s telemetry access
According to Mark Slade, Fernando Alonso “asked — or demanded” that McLaren prevent Lewis Hamilton from accessing the Spaniard’s telemetry data. Fernando Alonso believed his rookie team-mate’s performances were being helped significantly by the information being shared between the two sides of the garage.
“This reminds us of the situation when the relationship between Fernando and Lewis was at its worst in 2007. Fernando actually asked — or demanded — that Lewis should not be allowed access to his data,” Slade explained on Peter Windsor’s podcast.
The suspicion appeared particularly significant given Lewis Hamilton’s extraordinary start to his rookie Formula 1 campaign. Heading into Silverstone, the British driver had finished on the podium in each of the opening eight races and was leading the Drivers’ Championship.
According to Slade’s account, Fernando Alonso was not simply asking for Lewis Hamilton to lose access to his information while continuing to benefit from data generated by the other McLaren. The Spaniard was prepared to give up access to Hamilton’s telemetry as well, creating complete separation between the two cars.
Such an arrangement would have fundamentally changed the flow of information inside the garage. It would have affected both race engineers and potentially the wider technical organisation, with each side of the team effectively working with a more restricted pool of data.
Why Mark Slade disagreed with Fernando Alonso’s approach
Mark Slade did not agree with the solution proposed by Fernando Alonso. In his view, the Spaniard should instead have taken greater advantage of the information available from both cars to improve his own performance.
“What he should have done, in my opinion, was use that information more effectively to improve his own performance. The more data you have available as an engineer, the better you can assess things and the faster the team goes,” Slade explained.
“It’s not just about beating your team-mate, but trying to beat all the other cars as well,” he added, underlining the broader competitive logic behind McLaren’s approach.
For the team, sharing information between its drivers was not simply about helping one competitor against the other. McLaren was fighting Ferrari for the Constructors’ Championship at that stage of the season and wanted to extract the maximum performance from both cars.
McLaren rejected Alonso’s request
McLaren therefore rejected Fernando Alonso’s proposal. According to Slade, the fundamental reason was that restricting information on either side of the garage risked reducing the overall competitiveness of the team.
“The main reason McLaren refused was that we needed both cars to be as fast as possible. If we limit what we can do on both sides of the garage, then we limit our overall performance as well,” the engineer explained.
For Mark Slade, the request was also a reflection of the wider dissatisfaction Fernando Alonso was experiencing during a deeply complicated season.
“It was a way, perhaps a slightly clumsy one, of trying to correct what he considered to be an unfair situation,” Slade observed.
The engineer recalled that Fernando Alonso was prepared to take the idea even further, potentially demanding communication barriers between the race engineers on the two sides of the garage. McLaren strongly opposed the proposal and it was never implemented.
“I suppose that, in the end, he would also have insisted on communication barriers between the race engineers. That would only have opened a real Pandora’s box,” Slade added.
According to the former McLaren engineer, the team’s refusal also demonstrated just how unsustainable Fernando Alonso felt the situation had become.
Would Pedro de la Rosa have changed Alonso’s 2007 season?
Peter Windsor ended the discussion by asking Mark Slade one final question: whether Fernando Alonso’s 2007 season might have unfolded differently if Pedro de la Rosa had been alongside him at McLaren instead of Lewis Hamilton.
Slade’s answer was brief but revealing: “Very probably.”
It leaves open one of the enduring questions surrounding a season that remains a defining chapter in the careers of both Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. What began as a formidable McLaren pairing rapidly developed into an internal battle that the team struggled to control, and Slade’s latest recollections show that the fight over information inside the garage had become another important part of that rivalry long before the season reached its conclusion.
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