By Jonathan Noble Friday, May 18th 2007, 09:39 GMT
World champion Fernando Alonso needs to start taking a more 'clever' approach to his driving if he is going to fight off the challenge posed by his teammate Lewis Hamilton.
That is the view of three-time champion Niki Lauda, who claims that Alonso has to start using his greater experience to better effect after seeing Hamilton become the star of the season and lead the world championship.
Lauda says that the difficulties Alonso is going through at McLaren at the moment remind him of his period at the team when he raced against Alain Prost.
"Hamilton is at the beginning of his experience curve while Alonso is at the end," said Lauda in this week's Autosport magazine. "Fernando will have to use that.
"Hamilton has lots of room to move forward. Every race he does he will get more experience. The real danger from Hamilton is next year, when he knows all the circuits. He is certainly the best guy around and there is even more potential than the British media expects. It will come."
Lauda added: "Alonso's situation reminds me of my own at McLaren with Prost, except he was more experienced. The year before I had (John Watson), which I liked because he was slower and a known quantity.
"Then Prost came and, first race, he's two places ahead of me on the grid. I used my experience to lead, the car retired. I went back to the hotel and he won the race."
Lauda said he began to take every risk he could to try and out quality Prost, but kept failing. It was only then that he realised that a change of approach was needed if he was going to see off the Frenchman.
"I lost no set-up time trying to beat him in qualifying and worked only for the race. It was the only reason I won the championship. I was clever enough, early enough, to switch the philosophy.
"Fernando will need to be clever too but he also has the Ferraris, which is not easy."
