The Athletic

When you think of McLaren's controversial 2007 F1 season, two things immediately spring to mind.

The Fernando Alonzo-Louis Hamilton rivalry and the spy scandal that resulted in the

team being thrown out of that year's Constructors' Championship.

And in the middle of the year at the Hungara Ring, those two storylines overlapped in a way

that would have huge repercussions for the main players involved.

The battle between the drivers exploded in full view of the watching world during qualifying,

and one of the many consequences from it was a revelation from Alonzo that doomed McLaren

in the SpyGate case not long after it had initially been let off by the FIA.

This is normally the part of a Bring Back V10's intro where I say, we're going to discuss all that and much more.

But for Hungary 2007, it would be more accurate to say, we're going to discuss all of that in a lot of detail,

plus a couple of other things that were going on in F1.

So joining me, Glenn Freeman, to get stuck into this story from F1's V8 era are Mark Hughes and Karun Chandak.

Karud, welcome back for another appearance in series 10.

You were pretty quick to volunteer for this one.

So when you think of the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

It's got to be the pit lane incident in qualifying.

I mean, you know, Alonzo Park there and not going out,

followed quickly by Ron Dennis stomping into the Park Fermé afterwards and awkwardly trying to talk to Fernando while he completely ignored him.

So, yeah, that's got to be the overriding memory.

Yeah, dragging, it was Fernando's trainer, wasn't it, dragging him off the pit wall as well

to come with him.

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