Fernando Alonso might feel Formula 1 has a fairness problem when a driver like Max Verstappen can spend a season marooned in the midfield, but Damon Hill isn’t buying it — and he didn’t bother dressing up his rebuttal.
In the wake of another bruising weekend for Red Bull at Silverstone, Hill fired back at Alonso’s recent comments about Verstappen’s 2026 predicament, calling them nonsense and making it clear he “strongly disagree[s]” with the two-time world champion.
Alonso, speaking to Spanish outlet *Mundo Deportivo*, framed Verstappen’s year as proof that the sport can be “a bit unfair”. The thrust of his argument was familiar: drivers don’t choose the performance window they’re handed, and the grid’s best can be rendered largely irrelevant by machinery that isn’t up to it.
“Max Verstappen is the best driver on the grid and this year he’s going to finish fifth or sixth,” Alonso said. “I don’t know if F1 is a bit unfair in that sense. But there’s no need to waste time explaining to people who don’t want to understand.”
It didn’t take long for Hill to land on the other side of the debate. Posting to Instagram Stories — the kind of drive-by platform that doesn’t invite much nuance — the 1996 world champion wrote: “What a load of rubbish! I strongly disagree with FA here.”
The backdrop is stark. Verstappen, four-time champion after his run of titles from 2021 through 2024, is enduring a season that reads like a different career. He sits seventh in the standings, 103 points off championship leader Kimi Antonelli, and still hasn’t won a race in 2026.
Silverstone was a particularly grim snapshot. Verstappen was classified 20th, but the number doesn’t really tell the story: he spun into the gravel at Stowe late on, effectively chalking up what amounts to his third retirement of the season even if the paperwork doesn’t scream “DNF”.
Alonso’s sympathy is not exactly hard to understand given his own history with the sport’s machinery lottery. He remains winless since 2013, and 2026 marks 20 years since his last title, taken with Renault — the team now known as Alpine. When he talks about talent being trapped by circumstance, he’s not theorising.
But Hill’s objection is revealing, because it’s less about the cold reality that cars decide titles — everyone in the paddock knows that — and more about the framing. Calling F1 “unfair” implies some moral imbalance, as though the sport owes a driver a competitive platform commensurate with his ability. Hill, never shy of pushing back on Verstappen-related narratives, clearly isn’t interested in that kind of sentimentality.
It also lands in the middle of Hill’s long-running role as Verstappen’s most reliable high-profile sceptic. Over recent years he’s taken repeated aim at what he sees as an overly aggressive edge to Verstappen’s racing, and he’s never sounded particularly moved by the argument that greatness requires sharp elbows.
At the height of Verstappen’s 2024 title fight with Lando Norris, Hill memorably compared him to Dick Dastardly — the cartoon villain from *Wacky Races* — a line that did the rounds precisely because it was so pointed. Hill stepped away from his Sky F1 punditry role at the end of that season and later said he’d “like to think” his outspoken Verstappen views didn’t affect the broadcaster’s decision.
He hasn’t toned it down since. Last year, when Alain Prost suggested Verstappen’s “directness” carried echoes of Niki Lauda, Hill largely agreed — with a caveat that cut to the bone. Verstappen, he said, “never misses a beat”, but: “Lauda drove with his mind, not his fists.”
Hill has also previously linked his sensitivity to contact and aggression to his experiences in motorcycle racing, where even a small clash can end disastrously. And, of course, Hill’s own career is inseparable from the sport’s most infamous title-deciding collision: his 1994 Adelaide clash with Michael Schumacher that decided the championship.
So when Alonso gestures at unfairness, Hill hears something else — an attempt to insulate Verstappen’s season from criticism by presenting it as fate rather than consequence. That’s the subtext, at least, and it explains the lack of patience in Hill’s response.
The irony is that Verstappen’s 2026 struggles have, if anything, made him more central to the sport’s conversation, not less. In dominant years, the discussion is about whether anyone can stop him; in lean ones, it becomes about how a champion reacts when the margins aren’t in his favour — and about how much credit or blame should stick to the driver versus the team.
Alonso’s point is that the best driver should be fighting at the front. Hill’s point, bluntly, seems to be: that’s not how Formula 1 works, and pretending it’s an injustice is “rubbish”. And as Verstappen’s winless season drags on, you can safely bet this won’t be the last time his plight gets used as a proxy war in bigger arguments about what the sport rewards — brilliance, brutality, or simply being in the right car at the right time.
