It's now gloves off for Alonso and Hamilton

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium: Now that they are fighting only for themselves and not for their team as well, the gloves have well and truly came off in Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso's world championship scrap.

Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa clinched a Ferrari one-two in the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday but the major talking point was the opening corner battle between McLaren teammates Alonso and Hamilton, who went on to finish third and fourth respectively.

After McLaren's expulsion from the constructors' championship in Thursday's spy hearing, Hamilton and Alonso no longer have any reason to look out for one another on the track.

And it took only until the first corner for Alonso, desperately defending his third position, to force Hamilton off the track and almost out of the race.

After the race the 22-year-old British rookie, now leading the championship by just two points, was upset with Alonso's aggressive defence.

"The guy on the outside doesn't always have the corner," Hamilton said.

"I don't know whether I was ahead, but there was enough room for us all to get round fair and square.

"I just feel for someone that's always complaining about people doing unfair manoeuvres, and everyone wanting to be fair, someone I look up to, he has gone and swiped me and pushed me as wide as he could. I was just really lucky there was a run-off area so I could take that."

He added: "We all had equal starts, perhaps a little bit better for me than for Fernando. I braked quite late and was on the outside quite close to the Ferraris. I started to accelerate and all of a sudden Fernando came sweeping across me, and he knew I was there, so..."

Alonso denied that the change of circumstances has led to a difference in the way he and Hamilton will race against each other for the remainder of the season.

"Same approach," he said after leaving the podium at Spa-Francorchamps.

"Today it was just coincidence that we started third and fourth, sometimes we are spread second and fourth or whatever.

"We arrived together at the first corner and here at Spa it is a little bit more tricky because it is a 180 degrees corner. So I think it was just that, nothing changed in the approach."

The McLaren pair would not even still be racing for the drivers' title if FIA president Max Mosley had held the deciding vote in Thursday's 'spygate' case.

Before the race in Belgium, Mosley said: "I would have taken all the points away from Hamilton and Alonso on the grounds that there is a suspicion they had an advantage that they should not have had.

"A significant majority on the council thought they should keep their points, about five (mostly lawyers) thought all the points should go."

The championship now heads for Japan and China before October's season finale in Brazil.

AFP

(China Daily 09/18/2007 page23)