McLaren should have benched Alonso – Briatore

(GMM) Flavio Briatore says McLaren has no-one to blame for failing to win the drivers' world championship.

The Renault boss, who shares a prickly relationship with his McLaren counterpart Ron Dennis, thinks the tension between teammates Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso was a devastating factor as the battle against Ferrari reached its climax in Brazil last Sunday.

Briatore would be delighted to reunite his French squad with Alonso next year, but he nonetheless thinks McLaren should have sidelined the openly uncomfortable Spaniard.

"They should have put a reserve in Alonso's place and Hamilton would have won without any problem," the Italian told Antenna 3 television.