Lewis Hamilton has reacted to his outdated rival Fernando Alonso questioning the worth of a few of his championships.
The Spaniard stated in an interview with the Netherlands’ Telegraaf this week {that a} championship has “much less worth while you’ve solely needed to battle together with your team-mate”.
Hamilton then posted an image on social media from 2007, when he and Alonso had been McLaren team-mates, with him on prime of a podium and Alonso second.
The seven-time champion posted a thumbs up image with the {photograph}.
Alonso had tried to scale back the influence of his feedback with a submit on Twitter on Saturday.
He wrote: “Please, all of the titles are wonderful, nicely deserved and galvanizing. Incomparable to one another and let’s get pleasure from champions and legends of our present time.
“Bored with the continual seek for headlines. Let’s get pleasure from them.”
Hamilton made his debut in F1 in 2007 and he and Alonso staged an in depth and typically bitter battle. Each ended up shedding out to Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen by a single level.
On the finish of the season, Hamilton and Alonso had been tied on factors and each had 4 wins, however Hamilton was declared forward within the championship by advantage of getting extra second locations.
Hamilton’s Twitter submit was a response to the social media response to Alonso’s interview, through which he in contrast his personal two world titles in 2005 and 2006 with these of Max Verstappen this 12 months and final, towards Hamilton’s record-equalling seven.
Alonso stated: “This 12 months Max may be very dominant and in some unspecified time in the future he was in a position to cruise to the world title. Final season it was completely different. I believed he outperformed Lewis in the long run and I believe he’s a worthy champion.
“I even have plenty of respect for Lewis. Nonetheless, it is completely different while you win seven world titles, while you’ve solely needed to battle together with your team-mate.
“Then I believe {that a} championship has much less worth than when you’ve got fewer titles however you’ve gotten needed to compete towards different drivers with equal and even higher materials.
“In 2005 and 2006, I had a very good begin to the 12 months and I used to be in a position to create a lead. Then others might have had a greater automotive, however I used to be in a position to handle that hole.
“I by no means needed to battle with my team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella to win the title. I additionally did not see Max battle Sergio Perez or Alex Albon to win races.
“However [Michael] Schumacher primarily fought along with his team-mate Rubens Barrichello to grow to be champion 5 occasions in a row and Hamilton with Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas. That is completely different, I believe.”
Alonso’s feedback are a questionable interpretation of a few of the titles gained by Schumacher and Hamilton.
Schumacher and Ferrari dominated in 2001, 2002 and 2004 and the German driver had solely his team-mate to beat, however in 2003 he had an in depth battle with McLaren’s Raikkonen and Williams’ Juan Pablo Montoya.
And whereas it’s a truthful remark to say Mercedes had been unbeatable from 2014 to 2016 and in 2019-20, in 2017 and 2018 the Ferrari was arguably the faster automotive for almost all of each seasons.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel’s led the championship for a lot of each of these years, just for his title marketing campaign to be undermined by errors from each driver and crew, in addition to issues with reliability and shedding the event battle late within the 12 months.