FERNANDO ALONSO has made an astonishing claim that Max Verstappen’s two F1 titles mean more than Lewis Hamilton’s seven world crowns.
It came after Red Bull were slapped with a £6million fine and a reduction in wind tunnel time for breaking the £114million budget cap in 2021 when Verstappen controversially beat Hamilton to the title.
Social media raged at the penalty, with Verstappen being labelled a “costcap champion” or simply “costcappen”, as the FIA failed to overturn the championship, despite the outcome of the defining Abu Dhabi GP.
Alonso, who has a history of bad blood with Hamilton following their bitter fallout as teammates at McLaren in 2008, said: “I have a lot of respect for Lewis, but still it is different when you win seven world titles when you only had to fight with your teammate.
“Then I think a championship has less value than when you have fewer titles but have had to fight against other drivers with equal or even better material.
“In 2005 and 2006, I had a good start to the year myself and was able to create a lead. Then others might have had a better car, but I was able to manage that gap.
“I never had to fight with my teammate to win those titles. Nor did I see Max fighting with [Sergio] Perez or [Alex] Albon to win races.
“But Schumacher in particular fought with his teammate to become champion five times in a row and Hamilton fought with Rosberg and [Valtteri] Bottas. That’s different, I think.
“I want to fight with the best drivers and Max is part of that. I have been lucky enough to fight with Sebastian Vettel, Lewis and Michael Schumacher in the past, but I have never had that chance with Max.
“Hopefully that will still happen in the coming years when I drive for Aston Martin.”
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Red Bull boss Christian Horner said on Friday that while his team accepted the terms of their cost cap breach, he was adamant the overspend of £432,652 would not have increased his team’s cars’ performance.
Horner also said he felt the £6million fine and wind tunnel reduction was “draconian”, as it would reduce his cars’ performance by half a second over a lap.
However, Mercedes trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, hit back ahead of Sundayâs Mexico GP, saying: “The scale of that penalty isn’t much more than what you would lose if you are just one place higher up in the championship.
“It’s not as big as the penalty if you are positioned two places higher. So I think describing it as draconian is an exaggeration.
“You definitely need to be more efficient but if it were half a second, which I’d heard mentioned, then a team at the back of the grid would have over a three-second advantage to one at the front and that simply isn’t the case.”
When asked by SunSport just how much development you could do with £432,652, Shovlin said it could amount to a “major update” to improve performance.
He added: “Day in and day out we’re making decisions of what we don’t do, that are at the orders of one, two or three thousand pounds.
“We simply don’t have enough money, you’ve got to choose where it goes very carefully.
“It’s very difficult to put a lap time on it but the reality is that money buys performance.
“In terms of an upgrade kit that could easily be a major update kit.”
