Fernando Alonso has been tipped to get the better of Lewis Hamilton in this year’s Formula 1 season, in what will be a dual between two of the sport’s elder statesmen.
2026 will see two-time champion Alonso begin his 23rd season of F1, and will turn 45 by the time the calendar ends.
Hamilton has just celebrated his 41st birthday, with this year being his 20th campaign, his first, of course, as team-mate to Alonso at McLaren.
The Brit has achieved virtually everything there is to achieve in F1, but joined Ferrari last year in a bid to conjure more magic, and an eighth world title.
But the season was Hamilton’s worst in the sport, failing to score a top-three finish for the first time in his glittering career, amid continuing complaints about the ground-effect era of F1, and the often-tricky Ferrari SF-25.
Speaking on the Stay on Track podcast, three-time Grand Prix-winner Herbert has pinned much of Hamilton’s misery on the former problem, comparing it to the golden era of former rival Sebastian Vettel.
“In the past, I always thought, anyway, he was always able to drive around the problem, and that now doesn’t seem to be the case,” he said.
“But is it just a case of… I remember Sebastian Vettel, when we had the blown floors. He was fantastic with the blown floors, and when the blown floors got taken away from him, it was never the same Sebastian Vettel before. So is it just the car doesn’t suit him?”
Fernando Alonso ‘wants to recover something,’ Lewis Hamilton ‘doesn’t want to be there’
Herbert contrasted that to Alonso, who he said “still throws some great performances in,” despite the relative uncompetitiveness of his Aston Martin package.
“He really does, but then you get the sense with Fernando, there’s a part of his career that went missing, and I think he feels he’s still got the fight. He wants to recover something,” responded Herbert’s co-host, Damon Hill, who initially made the comparison due to the pair’s similar age.
“Whereas I wonder whether Lewis has had a belly full. You know, the post-race interviews… He doesn’t want to be there.”
Herbert concluded that if he was to bet on one driver to extract more out of a car at the present time, it would be Alonso.
“If I look at those two, and I go, right, which one would I expect, if he were given the car, which one would be the one I put my money on? And I probably, unfortunately, sadly, say I’d probably go [with] Fernando,” he said.
“Fernando, he’s in a bad car in that Aston Martin. It’s not the best. It’s sort of there or thereabouts sometimes. But he’s able to sort of squeeze that extra something out of it.
“And I never saw that happen last year with Lewis, which I’m sort of shocked that we never ever saw that.
“I’m sure he’s very frustrated and shocked that he wasn’t able to do it. And then I look at his face and those interviews after the race, and you go, he’s lost.
“He cannot understand what he needs to do to get around the problem he’s got.
“And of course, Charles [Leclerc] is getting around it.”
READ MORE – How Fernando Alonso almost got his F1 mechanics at McLaren sacked
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