Lewis Hamilton has hailed Fernando Alonso as "the best driver in F1" - a week after Alonso identified Hamilton as the man to beat for this year's title.
Relations dramatically thaw between former foes
Lewis Hamilton has hailed Fernando Alonso as "the best driver in F1" - a week after Alonso himself identified Hamilton as the man he must beat to land this year's World Championship.
Though their solitary year together at McLaren in 2007 will forever be recalled as one of the most discordant team-mate pairings in F1 history, with a mutually-destructive civil war effectively breaking out inside the McLaren garage, relations between the pair have dramatically thawed of late. Mutual destruction, it would seem, has been replaced by mutual admiration.
"He is the dark horse and he's driving for the dark horse. I wouldn't expect anything less. He is a two-time world champion and probably the best driver here," Hamilton said of Alonso on Sunday night.
Those remarks follow an equally-effusive accolade for Hamilton from his one-time nemesis at the start of the weekend: "We are looking to November and it is Hamilton we want to be close to. It is impossible to predict how the season will evolve, but I would hardly believe it will stay like this. Still, if I can tip one driver, I would pick him because he's the only one who can make a difference even with a car that is not a winner."
All of which begs the obvious question: could the pair yet be reunited at Ferrari in the near future?
The possibility still seems remote, but, as The Daily Mail remarked at the start of the month as the newspaper reported on how the relationship between Alonso and Hamilton had 'thawed beyond imagination in recent weeks', 'nothing heals wounds faster in Formula One than the need to assume a bargaining position.'
