Formula One / Ralph Ellis / 14 October 2008 /

Fernando Alonso doesn't want Lewis Hamilton to win the Driver's Championship and he doesn't mind who knows it, says Ralph Ellis.

It's nothing new for Lewis Hamilton to find that Fernando Alonso wants to stop him becoming world champion. It happened last season when they were supposed to be team mates, so it can't be a surprise now.

So sure enough, as the race for the drivers' championship comes towards squeaky bum time, the Spaniard is making it clear he'll do everything in his powers to extend the feud that began in the McClaren camp last year. He'd like Felipe Massa to win the title and he doesn't mind who knows it.

Back to back Grand Prix victories in his Renault have put Alonso back in the limelight as the Formula One circus heads to China and he's offering no pretence at all about his feelings. "Yes, without doubt, if I can help Massa [win the title] then I will," he told everybody yesterday.

The threat represents a serious challenge to the integrity - as well as the safety - of the sport as the championship countdown reaches its climax. Could Alonso even just drive Hamilton off the road and leave the way clear for Massa to overturn the five point lead that Hamilton now holds? Even if he didn't go to that extreme, might he take an opportunity to let Massa pass him easily and then play cat and mouse with Hamilton to hold him back?

There's little doubt the other drivers resent Hamilton's success and status as the new pin up boy of the sport. They see him as a little too slick, a touch too arrogant, and at times too daring and dangerous in his race moves. But Alonso is the only one with the status to come out and say it openly, and it cranks up the pressure on the young British star before Sunday's race. At 23, Hamilton would take Alonso's record as the youngest ever to win the drivers' championship if he can hold things together through two more races. The Spaniard clearly doesn't want to see that go without a fight.

Regular readers of this column know that we've made money laying Hamilton in races in the second-half of the season, and it's sorely tempting to do the same thing again this week. For all that he's talked a good game about staying calm and playing the percentages to pick up points, when the red lights turned to green last Sunday in Japan the track told a different tale. Hamilton had a rush of adrenalin and tried to roar away in a manoeuvre that ultimately cost him a chance to score any points at all. Will he learn from that? It's doubtful and you sense there's another mishap waiting to occur with or without Alonso's involvement.

Hamilton is [2.78] this morning to win in China, so it's worth letting the week unfold and waiting for those odds to tighten before taking the chance to lay him again. But if you want to go the whole hog you can lay him at [1.45] for the drivers' title.

Even if he does become world champion, don't think about backing him to be BBC Sports Personality of the year at odds as short as [3.0]. That award was almost certainly settled - ironically in this week's Grand Prix venue of China - when Rebecca Adlington won two gold medals. She's still priced at [2.5] to get the coveted prize come Christmas time and when the grannies start phoning in their votes - just as they did for Zara Phillips - should really be odds on.

Five things you might not know about Fernando Alonso

1. Born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1981 his dad was a mechanic in an explosives factory while his mum worked in a department store

2. He started driving at the age of three because older sister Lorena wasn't interested in the go-kart dad built for her

3. Four times Spanish junior karting champion was just the start of a record breaking career. He was the youngest driver to achieve pole position in a Grand Prix as well as the youngest to win the world title.

4. Champion for the second consecutive season in 2006, a year after that he joined Michael Schumacher as the only drivers to achieve 100 points in three successive seasons

5. He and Spanish pop singer Raquel del Rosario have repeatedly denied stories that they secretly married - but Alonso has several times this year referred to her as 'my wife'

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