WHAT WENT WRONG? Inside McLaren's Hungary debacle.(Competitions of car racing)

Byline: ADAM COOPER

Formula One's summer vacation came at the right time for McLaren, and it was all smiles in the team's camp in Turkey after a strong effort to establish a working relationship between its two estranged drivers. Indeed, the weekend passed without the sort of controversy that had erupted in Hungary.

From the start of the season, it was clear that Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso could never be best buddies. When Alonso originally signed up back in November 2005, Hamilton had just finished a season in Formula Three, and nobody could have guessed that he would end up as Alonso's teammate. The world champion had no idea that he would be up against someone who is so loved by the team and especially its boss, Ron Dennis.

As soon as it became clear that they would be title rivals this year, Dennis knew he faced the type of problem he had when he was required to juggle the needs of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in 1988-89. An extra complication these days is that strategy requirements, especially in qualifying, mean that one driver or the other sometimes has to get the preferable option, and thus it's harder to provide a level playing field.

In the final qualifying session in Hungary, things started to go wrong when Hamilton inexplicably ignored a prearranged strategy for track position and refused to let Alonso past. His own strategy compromised, at the crucial final pit stops for new tires, the furious world champion waited in the pit box to prevent Hamilton-who was waiting behind him-from leaving pit lane in time to complete his final timed lap. It appeared to be a deliberate attempt to sabotage his teammate.

"In this instance, it was Fernando's time to get the advantage of ...