Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso still have ‘needle’ between them, Martin Brundle claims

Alonso backed up Hamilton and held onto seventh place in Monte Carlo

Alonso and Hamilton fought for seventh place at the Monaco Grand Prix (Getty Images)

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton still have ‘needle between them’ following their battle at the Monaco Grand Prix, says ex-racer Martin Brundle.

Hamilton was showing far superior pace than Alonso at the Monte Carlo circuit but failed to find a way past the Spaniard as he was forced to settle for eighth place.

Alonso backed up Hamilton for a lengthy period towards the end of the race, so much so that he ended up 34 seconds behind sixth place Lando Norris.

And Brundle feels the Monaco race showed there is still some tension between the two former world champions who were teammates at McLaren 15 years ago.

Speaking in his Sky Sports column, he said: “[Lando] Norris had that luxury of an extra stop because behind him Fernando Alonso went into a steady, but necessary for him, tyre preservation mode with the rest of the field queued up behind him, starting with a very frustrated Lewis Hamilton.

“‘That’s not my problem’ said Fernando, and you can’t help but sense there’s still needle between them after their McLaren season as teammates back in 2007.

“Fernando then bizarrely took off for a while and did the third fastest lap of the race to retain 7th place.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff accused Alonso of driving at ‘Formula 2’ pace while backing up Hamilton.

Alonso then responded by insisting Hamilton did the same once he sped up in the closing stages.

Hamilton’s failure to increase his pace left Alonso’s Alpine teammate Esteban Ocon stuck behind him. With a five-second penalty set to be imposed on Ocon after the race, the Frenchman was left frustrated and ended up dropping from ninth to 12th and out of the points.

“We had to do a lot of tyre management,” said Alonso. “We had some concerns that the yellow tyres (medium) could grain a lot on our car, and the first 10 or 15 laps I took care of the tyres a lot.

“After that I pushed again when they told me Esteban had to make a five-second gap, but at that point Hamilton didn’t want to push, hold Esteban at the back – yeah, disappointing.”