Former McLaren mechanic Mark Priestley said in the PitStop podcast that his teammate Fernando Alonso handed out envelopes of money to his mechanics in 2007 so that they would treat him better than debutant Lewis Hamilton…
Mark Priestley: “Fernando always tries to win the team over, to make sure everyone works for their half of the pits. He likes to have everything under control.
There was a point in 2007 when Fernando’s manager or coach handed out money envelopes to anyone who wasn’t working on Lewis’ machine. All of us – his mechanics, engineers and I – then I was in charge of the spare car, received little brown envelopes – in mine was about 1500 euros.
The plan was cunning. You received an unmarked envelope, opened it and saw that it was full of money. Everyone around asked, ‘Have you opened yours? How much did you get? Rumors spread through the team and it soon became apparent that everyone except Lewis’s mechanics had received the envelopes. It became clear that he was trying to get us to his side in this way in the tense battle he was having with Hamilton.
But the tactic didn’t work. The team’s management found out what had happened and forced us to donate the money we received to charity.
Lewis acted differently, he played his games with the media. Neither of them was perfect, but they both had fantastic results.”
Source: F1 News
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