F1 champion Fernando Alonso 'ripped door off its hinges' and 'broke crash helmet' in rage over slow pace

Fernando Alonso, MexicanGP, 2025, generic — Photo: © IMAGO

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Fernando Alonso 'ripped door off its hinges' and 'broke crash helmet' in F1 rage over slow pace

Alonso reportedly did not take well to this poor F1 result

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Tuesday 4 August 2026 08:58 Updated: 09:59

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A former F1 insider has shed light on a time when two-time champion Fernando Alonso was left full of rage over the unsatisfactory pace of his machinery.

The Spaniard has spent most of the 2026 campaign struggling to get his Aston Martin into Q2, not exactly how he would have expected his first experience of driving an Adrian Newey-designed F1 car to pan out.

Now 45 years of age, Alonso is the oldest driver on the grid, though former team-mate and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton is not far behind him having turned 41 prior to the 2026 season.

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Both champions have endured frustrating periods across their career where they struggled to extract performance from their car, and now, Alonso's ex-racing engineer Mark Slade has revealed just how frustrated the Spaniard got after a particularly frustrating result off the back of his two consecutive championship victories. F1 HEADLINES: Verstappen to Aston Martin, Mercedes cost cap fears and Sky F1's uncertain future

Alonso's F1 rage revealed

Alonso made the decision for the 2007 campaign to leave Renault, despite claiming back-to-back title victories with them, instead signing for McLaren.

As reigning champion, Alonso was perhaps expecting special treatment, but his team-mate for his one and only season with the British squad (until he returned to race for them from 2015-2018) was none other than 22-year-old rookie at the time, Hamilton.

One of the flash points of their partnership came at the 2007 Bahrain Grand Prix, when Hamilton qualified on the front row and was set to start the race in second, two places ahead of his defending champion team-mate.

Hamilton managed to cling onto his starting position and crossed the line in P2, whilst Alonso dropped back to finish the race down in fifth.

Fernando Alonso was furious with his pace in Bahrain compared to Lewis Hamilton

The F1 driver who was in his mid-20s at the time then reportedly took his rage out on the infrastructure of the F1 team's office, as revealed by McLaren engineer Slade.

Describing the situation that unfolded following the 2007 Bahrain GP, Slade told former team manager Peter Windsor in a YouTube livestream: "Lewis was ahead. I think Fernando was running fourth, and he'd been very unhappy with the way that weekend had gone in terms of what we'd done with fuel loads in qualifying across the two cars, his pace hadn't been a match for Lewis's generally, and he was just angry and upset.

"Towards the end of the race, Nick Heidfeld overtook him for for that fourth position, dropping him to fifth, and I just couldn't believe it because it seemed very clear that it was because Fernando was unhappy and he just wasn't driving fast enough.

"After that race, he got out the car, he came back to the office, and he actually ripped the office door, off its hinges, and threw his helmet against the wall and broke his helmet in the rage that he was in."

Both Alonso and Hamilton finished the season with 109 points to their name, just one less than 2007 drivers' champion Kimi Raikkonen, with Hamilton claiming P2 in his first F1 campaign and Alonso having to settle for third.

The Spaniard left McLaren after just one year alongside the Brit and returned to Enstone-based F1 squad, Renault.