In 2006, Heikki Kovalainen, who was a teammate of Lewis Hamilton at McLaren in 2008 and 2009, was able to watch Fernando Alonso’s championship at Renault as the number one driver. The Finn, who knows both drivers, recently expressed an interesting opinion during his F1 career – as it turned out later – about the Spanish, who have been certified for a worse team on several occasions.

“Sometimes I was surprised that the bad credentials could have been caused by the surprise caused by Hamilton’s speed,” says the one-time race winner. In 2007, Alonso and Hamilton finished the tournament with a tie, but based on his results, the British were ranked higher. As is well known, the Spanish left McLaren after a single season. “There was nowhere to go, Renault was on a kind of slope. He tried to get himself together, but he never really succeeded. ”

Kovalainen himself knows how hard it is to compete with Hamilton. The Finn admitted that in each training session he had to strain to stay at least at the same level as his British teammate. “Even for super talents like Max Verstappen, it takes a lot of effort, concentration, energy. It’s not easy, not everyone handles this well, ”he said.

Of all Hamilton’s teammates, Nico Rosberg did it all, and Kovalainen remembered it. “I think Rosberg had to use all his means to defeat Lewis. It almost killed him. He also said he could not have done it this way for another season, otherwise he would have died. ”