Alonso and Hamilton on duel: 'As you would expect from a champion'

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton had nothing but words of praise for each other after the Australian Grand Prix. The former teammates and old rivals went into the duel for second place and looked back fondly.

Hamilton had a good race in Australia. Although the Mercedes driver could not really keep up in the first two races of the year, he was at the front by default in Australia and even led for a while. The Briton had to acknowledge that Verstappen was a size too big for him, but was able to duel with Alonso throughout the race to eventually finish in second place.

Looking back on the duel, Alonso said in the press conference afterwards: "In terms of pace we were very close to Lewis, also through the race – but every time that I tried to get close, yes he seemed to pick up the pace. I try to put some pressure but, you know, he had an incredible race, no mistakes at all, as you probably expect from him, a champion. I was trying to put pressure but nothing happened."

'Fernando makes no mistakes'

For his part, Hamilton had equally laudatory words for Alonso. "We had a very good duel with Fernando, which was awesome. He was probably just a bit faster all afternoon. It was definitely not easy to keep him behind me. He had two or three charges where I really had to up the ante. Fernando doesn't make mistakes, and so it had to be a perfect run."