Fernando Alonso identifies what went wrong with Lewis Hamilton during their infamous McLaren stint - “We were young, immature”

In the newly-released DAZN documentary called ‘Fernando. Revealed’, Formula 1 veteran Fernando Alonso dwelled into his spat with rookie Lewis Hamilton during their stint together at McLaren.

Fernando Alonso was the name on everybody's lips heading into the 2007 F1 season. The Spaniard had made a high-profile move to McLaren after winning two straight F1 Drivers' Championships with Renault in 2005 and 2006.

At McLaren, the defending champion was paired up alongside up-and-coming McLaren junior driver and rookie Lewis Hamilton. The idea seemingly did not sit well with Alonso, and the cracks between the duo started to show soon.

By the fifth race of the season in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton made a claim of being the team's "second driver." The defining moment came in Hungary when Alonso, in a display of defiance, blocked Hamilton in the pits during qualifying.

The tension escalated further when Alonso threatened to expose incriminating evidence in the infamous 2007 SpyGate scandal, which implicated the team in the unauthorized use of Ferrari design material.

Fernando Alonso recently reflected on the pair's infamous rivalry. The 42-year-old, now an Aston Martin driver, acknowledged the strains that marred their relationship. He stated (via PlanetF1):

"Now there is another type of rivalry, I don’t think we will be friends in the future or that we will ever have… I think we don’t share many things."

Alonso acknowledged being "young" and "immature" as the reason for the growing tensions with Lewis Hamilton back in 2007. He said:

"But it is true that in 2007 the rivalry rose to a higher level. There were many things that broke the relationship harmony of that year. We were young, immature, I was the first, and we had many clashes.

"We were in the same team, the same garage, we travelled together many times, we were in the meetings and we began to notice that there was this friction, there was tension, we were playing for the World Championship and we were playing each race on Sunday."

Fernando Alonso on McLaren's role in his rivalry with Lewis Hamilton

Alonso also talked about the internal strife within the McLaren team, where he claimed individual interests took precedence over collaborative development. He stated:

"You arrive at the team meeting and you are seeing his telemetry, his ‘on board’ cameras of the car, and that, for example, his car goes a little ahead and when he speaks in the meeting he complains about the rear, things like that."

He added:

"So that the team did not take a direction or take a philosophy to develop the car that would be good for both of us, but rather each one was already looking for their own thing, to have that extra advantage, because we were very evenly matched."

The rivalry reached its crescendo when both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso missed out on the 2007 F1 Drivers' Championship by a single point to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. Fernando Alonso parted ways with McLaren at the end of the season, returning to Renault.