‘I cannot believe it’: Alonso fumes over Hamilton’s limping Ferrari — and Lewis fires back online
Eighteen years on and the Alonso–Hamilton needle still finds its mark.
Singapore gave us the latest chapter. Fernando Alonso spent the final phase bottled up behind Lewis Hamilton’s stricken Ferrari, the Briton nursing fading brakes and, in the process, racking up track-limit breaches while keeping the Aston Martin behind. Alonso couldn’t get it done on the road; the stewards later moved him up anyway, demoting Hamilton to eighth with a five‑second penalty and handing Alonso seventh.
The radio told you everything about Alonso’s mood in the moment. “I cannot believe it. I cannot f—ing believe it,” he snapped as the laps ticked away. “Is it safe to drive with no brakes? Five seconds, minimum! For me, you cannot drive when the car is not safe, you know. Sometimes they try to disqualify me with no mirror, and now you have no brakes, and everything is fine? I doubt it.”
Hamilton, for his part, queried mid-race whether his repeated excursions warranted sanction given the “force majeure” of a brake issue. The stewards weren’t sympathetic. In their decision, they noted Hamilton admitted he left the circuit multiple times while managing the problem. And while the Driving Standards Guidelines do allow for specific exemptions, this wasn’t one of them. Usual penalty applied, case closed — a stance neither Ferrari nor Hamilton contested in the hearing.
What the penalty couldn’t do was rewrite the optics. Alonso spent a chunk of laps staring at a Ferrari step-dancing over the white lines and felt robbed of a clean pass. Hamilton took the hit, kept the points he could, and then did something very Lewis Hamilton: he went online.
“18 years of…” he wrote over a video in which a character repeats “I don’t believe it” on loop. No names, no tags — but it didn’t require a detective to connect it to Alonso’s outburst. It was classic Hamilton mischief, a wink across the paddock aimed squarely at an old rival who had just given the internet a catchphrase.
If you’re new here, this isn’t a feud, it’s a franchise. They’ve shared a grid since 2007, when Hamilton arrived at McLaren as the most hyped rookie in decades and Alonso, freshly crowned a double World Champion, expected to run the place. What followed — qualifying flashpoints, spy scandal backwash, and enough tension to power the hospitality units — still shapes how their names land together. Alonso exited McLaren after a single, scorched season; Hamilton stayed and won the 2008 title. Over time the barbs softened, the mutual respect grew. And yet, every so often, the embers glow.
Singapore stoked them again because it framed a familiar question: where do racing instincts end and sporting lines begin? Hamilton’s verdict from Race Control was straightforward: track limits are track limits, even with a wounded car. Alonso’s gripe was more philosophical — if a car can’t stay inside the lines, should it be out there at all? You can understand his frustration; being stuck behind a car living on borrowed brake material while the stopwatch bleeds is a special kind of torture.
The irony is both veterans know the edges better than anyone. Hamilton, now leading Ferrari’s new era, salvaged what he could in a compromised package on a night when the margins bit. Alonso, still the most stubborn racer in the field in Aston Martin green, smelled blood and didn’t get to pounce the way he wanted. They both walked away with points and a story — just different versions of it.
What comes next? Probably a cooling of temperatures by the time the circus sets up at the next stop, and then, if fate’s feeling playful, another shared piece of tarmac with too much history and not enough room. That’s the thing about an 18‑year rivalry: it doesn’t need a title fight to be box office. It only needs two drivers who hate giving an inch, and a white line they both see in different shades.
