Damon Hill admits that he would choose Fernando Alonso as his teammate if he had to pick a driver from the 2021 F1 grid. The 1996 World Champion has been impressed by the Spaniard's form and attitude since he returned to the sport this season with Alpine following two years away, and believes that the 40-year-old would now be easier to work with than he may have been in the past. "Fernando Alonso has got to be right up there on my list of chosen teammates at the moment," Hill told the F1 Nation podcast. "Esteban Ocon was singing his praises after the Hungarian Grand Prix and saying what a great lad he was to work with. "I would think that when he was very much younger, and extremely quick and competitive, he may have been a little more difficult to work with. But we all live and learn and grow up and stuff, so the mature Fernando Alonso would have to be right up there on the list." Alonso has long been regarded by many as one of the best Formula 1 drivers of recent years, but the prospect of having such a strong teammate doesn't deter Hill, given that he would want to measure himself against the best. "My career was enhanced by being with the teammates that I was with," Hill explained. "Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, [David] Coulthard and [Jacques] Villeneuve. "You want to measure yourself against the best. You don't want to come out of here not knowing. I never was teammates with Michael Schumacher, but I raced against him in what I considered to be equal equipment and so I know how I measure up against Michael. "I'll never know how I measure up against Lewis Hamilton. Frankly I think he'd probably blow me into the weeds on a regular basis, but you'd like to have a go to find out. Every racing driver wants to know how they measure up, and so the benchmark is the best drivers. "Okay, it's difficult. It's not always a nice relationship when one of you in that room could become World Champion [and] the other one [could] lose, it sets up a very tricky dynamic. You're never going to be completely comfortable with a teammate, but if you're a sportsman then at least you should be able to look them in the eye and go, 'Well done', and they can say the same to you."
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