Fernando Alonso gave McLaren staff 'envelopes stuffed with cash' in Lewis Hamilton row

dailystar.co.uk:

Lewis Hamilton’s teammate, it has been claimed.Having won back-to-back F1 titles with Renault in 2005 and 2006, Alonso moved to McLaren, where he thought he would be team leader while young rookie Hamilton would be a dutiful number two.

Of course, that is not how it panned as Hamilton produced arguably the greatest debut season in F1 history, winning four races and going agonisingly close to winning the title.As a result, Hamilton and Alonso feuded on and off the track with the atmosphere in the team turning increasingly toxic, to such an extent that the Spaniard left the team and returned to Renault at the end of the season.

With the McLaren drivers at war, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was able to nip in and take the title at the final round in Brazil.READ MORE: F1 Grand Prix set for midnight finish in first Saturday race since 1985According to McLaren’s chief mechanic at the time, Marc Priestley, Alonso resorted to dubious means in an attempt to secure more support in what he saw as ‘Hamilton’s team’. "One of Fernando's tactics is to try and bring the whole team over to his side of the garage," Priestley told the PitStop podcast. "He tries to wrestle control.

There was a moment during 2007 when we had them both, where Fernando turned up at a race. "I arrived and Fernando's manager, or his trainer, is handing out little brown envelopes stuffed with cash to everybody who wasn't on Lewis' car.