Did the 2007 McLaren suit Hamilton much more than Alonso?

[DOCG]

It is widely stated that Hamilton has a much more similar driving style to Raikkonen, who was McLaren's prior first driver. The 2007 cars were not very different from cars in previous seasons so surely the car was already adapted to Raikkonen and Hamilton's style of driving.

[entropy]

The 2007 McLaren was very neutral but Lewis favoured a looser set up. 2007 was the start of Bridgestone as single tyre supplier. Alonso had to make minor adustments as was most experienced with Michelins and had to adjust to extract the last tenth or so whereas Lewis was a green rookie of no previous knowledge/database of extracting the maximum out of an F1 car. IIRC was also the start of spec weight distribution; Alonso at Renault had a car with a lot of rear weight bias as well as tyres biased to Renault.

2006 McLaren had a tendency to understeer but you could drive through it with the Michelin tyres.

2005 McLaren was aerodynamically unstable and tricky to set up but was developed into a car fighting for WDC.

Both Alonso and Hamilton were evenly matched.

[Muzzer79]

Ferrari signed Raikkonen to an option in 2005.

It was pretty clear by summer 2006 that Raikkonen was going and it was announced in September.

With that much uncertainty; McLaren didn’t build a car expressly to suit Raikkonen’s style.

They built a car to be fast. Hamilton and Alonso exploited it.
Alonso had to adapt to a new team, Hamilton was a rookie.

[carinaman]

Isn't Alonso known for adapting to cars and situations and an ability to work out strategy whilst driving? I thought Pat Symonds had expressed such an opinion. Alonso can drive around characteristics and problems in cars.

[Muzzer79]

carinaman said:

Isn't Alonso known for adapting to cars and situations and an ability to work out strategy whilst driving? I thought Pat Symonds had expressed such an opinion. Alonso can drive around characteristics and problems in cars.

Indeed

If he could get both the 2010 and 2012 Ferrari to within a whisker of the title, the 2007 McLaren should have been a walk in the park.

And indeed, he was very fast and came within 2 points of the title.

This is a weird topic for a thread.