Jacques Villeneuve snubs Lewis Hamilton for Fernando Alonso: ‘He disappears too often’

1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve ranked Fernando Alonso ahead of Lewis Hamilton, claiming the British driver had “too many downs” and became “complacent” during his dominant seasons.

Hamilton is F1’s most successful driver with seven world titles and over 100 race victories.

On the other hand, Alonso has just two titles to his name, with his most recent F1 victory coming at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.

It’s widely accepted that Alonso’s career statistics don’t align with his talent.

Alonso narrowly missed out on the 2007, 2010 and 2012 drivers’ titles by a handful of points.

Speaking on The Red Flags podcast, Villeneuve was asked to rank F1 world champions over the years.

When it came to Alonso versus Hamilton, Villeneuve felt that Hamilton wasn’t ruthless enough at times in dominant machinery and that some of the titles he secured would have been won anyway by some of his teammates, such as Valtteri Bottas.

“I will put Alonso because Hamilton has too many downs,” Villeneuve explained. “Even though he’s got all the championships, it’s not the quantity of championships.

“If you look at every season, there’s always been two, three, four races where he was completely disappearing.

“Then suddenly he woke up again and started winning again. Too many of those championships were in cars that even Bottas would have won the championship if Hamilton had not been there.

“That put him in a place where he became complacent. He forgot how hard he had to fight. You can see it now.

“It’s a big shock to him that, actually, no, he has to fight as hard as he did in his first and second season, because the first championship he had, amazing. He really fought hard for that. But after that, when the car became superior, he had too many easy years.

“He always had seasons where he had a few races where he disappeared. He wasn’t there anymore, and suddenly the light turned on again, and he was a killer again. Whereas Alonso is always there.”

Hamilton “made the right” team choices

One criticism of Fernando Alonso, compared to Lewis Hamilton, has been moving to the right - or wrong team.

Alonso left Ferrari to join McLaren-Honda in 2015, which was a miserable four seasons at Woking.

On the other hand, Hamilton gambled on Mercedes in 2013, and that switch proved to be a masterstroke.

“He’s been bad at that. Hamilton made the right choices at the right time,” Villeneuve added.

“At the same time, there was no way of knowing that Mercedes would have that engine, which was so much above the rest. That was a gamble. That was a big gamble, and it worked out.

“Alonso got close twice to winning with Ferrari until the last race. That little difference would have made the world.

“When there were teammates at McLaren, in the end, Hamilton, even though it was Hamilton’s first season. He’s not great at choosing his teams, and he’s very good at making enemies, even within teams. But as a driver, he’s always on it.”