"They didn’t expect much from him" - Reason behind team mechanics not wanting to work on Lewis Hamilton's car disclosed by former McLaren pit crew head

When Lewis Hamilton made his debut with McLaren in 2007, mechanics on the team were reportedly uninterested in servicing the Briton’s car as they were busy vying to work on then-reigning world champion Fernando Alonso’s car.

According to Marc Priestley, a former No. 1 mechanic at the Woking-based outfit, the mechanics were reportedly “tripping over each other” trying to serve Alonso in the hopes of being in the crew that would eventually win the world championship. Speaking on the Pitlane Life Lessons podcast, Priestley said:

“The mechanics and engineers were squabbling amongst themselves, fighting to get onto Fernando’s car. As mechanics and engineers, you want to win that World Championship just as much as the drivers do, and so of course you had the best opportunity of doing that by being on the current World Champion’s car, or so we thought.”

McLaren had an all-new driver line-up for the 2007 season when Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya were replaced by two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso and reigning F2 champion Lewis Hamilton.

Given Alonso’s pedigree at the time, team members within the British outfit were reportedly uninterested in working Hamilton’s car given that it was his first full year in the sport.

According to Priestley, many within the team reportedly thought that Alonso would most likely win the world championship for the third year in a row after realizing that they had produced a quick car in the MP4-22. He added, saying:

“People didn’t want to be on Lewis Hamilton’s car in that very first year because they didn’t expect much from him. Pretty much everyone in the factory had expectations, particularly once we realised, we had a quick car, that Fernando [Alonso] was our guy to deliver the big results.”

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Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso “wrestled for control” at McLaren: Marc Priestley

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso reportedly “went out of their way” to wrestle control of McLaren during the 2007 season in the hopes of gaining an advantage over each other, according to Marc Priestley.

He believes the duo’s toxic rivalry “split the team apart”, leading to them failing to clinch the world championship. He said:

“The two drivers at times went out of their way to wrestle control of the team over towards them, to wrestle support over to their side of the garage, to almost clamber over the person on the other side to give them a step up. I would say that was the very reason why we failed to win the World Championship in 2007. We had this giant, gaping split down the middle of our team.”

The infamous rivalry between Hamilton and Alonso during their sole season as teammates at McLaren is second only to that of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost on the same team.

The duo’s infighting led to them failing to clinch either championship despite having a superior car and yielded Ferrari’s last F1 driver’s championship to date with Kimi Raikkonen.