Should Fernando Alonso go wheel-to-wheel with Max Verstappen in the future, Peter Windsor believes it's the latter who'll come out on top as he questions Alonso's overtaking prowess.
One of the stars of this year's championship, Alonso recorded his sixth podium result of the campaign as he overtook Lewis Hamilton on the track to finish second at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Aston Martin driver got a good run on his Mercedes rival out of the Turn 11 hairpin and, with DRS assistance, got past Hamilton into the braking zone at Turn 13.
It was a hard but fair battle between the former protagonists and it had F1 fans wondering how Alonso would do in a similar tussle against reigning World Champion Verstappen.
That was put to former Ferrari and Williams team manager Windsor, who was recently reminded of a time when Alonso, racing a Ferrari, wasn't able to pass Pastor Maldonado in a Williams.
That was back at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix where Maldonado turned his shock pole position into an even more unexpected win with the Venezuelan keeping the Spaniard at bay to take the win - his one and only P1 in F1 - by three seconds.
"I bumped into Pastor Maldonado at Monaco," Windsor told his YouTube channel, "and I was thinking there's Alonso in a Ferrari in Barcelona, home grand prix, and Pastor blew him away. It's interesting that he did that.
"And so on that basis if we have an on-track battle on equal terms, in other words Max has lost the front wing endplate on the Red Bull and he's on 52-lap-old mediums and Fernando's on three-lap mediums and his car is in perfect shape, I'm being slightly facetious and cynical but that would be pretty much pretty much eyeball to eyeball.
"I just think Fernando is a bit like Nigel Mansell, everybody thought because he had such a tough, strong handshake that must be how he drives, he must be a very tough, aggressive driver with his inputs, but he wasn't, he was very, very fingertip being very sensitive and very subtle.
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"And I think it's a little bit like that with Fernando but in a different way. We all have this correct image of Fernando being a fabulous racing driver on the day, in other words, he raises his game on a Sunday and whatever the drive is that he's got in front of him he kind of puts it in doesn't he, and it happens around him and he always looks on top of the car and everything's homogenous.
"But is he the greatest overtaker or eyeball to eyeball racer?
"There's a difference. He's a very good Sunday performer, Sunday racing driver, gets the car home regardless of its condition, very, very consistent, very, very able to leave 10 percent, 20 percent of his brain capacity to think about strategy and tyre conditions and everything else. Brilliant like that.
"But in terms of actually racing you have to come back to the Maldonado-Alonso thing in Barcelona, and I can't see eyeball to eyeball in an equal car, I just can't see."
As such Windsor would give the win, or at least the on-track pass, to Verstappen.
"I think Max is the ultimate racing driver as well as the ultimate short corner driver at the moment, and I think he would have Fernando," he continued. "Anyway we'll see.
"I think it's never going to be a fair test, I suppose, because the situation I just described, the front wing endplate, the old mediums, new medium, that would only last for a minute or two anyway, because then Max either come in for his new tyres or a new front wing change or whatever.
"It's a good question, my answer is I think Max would have him."