F1 2019 (spoilers obviously)

I think the one outstanding stat was that he has one at least one race in every season he’s been in F1.

His performance in wet and mixed conditions is on another level. He won every wet race for five years between Hungary in 2014, where he got on the podium from a pit lane start, and Germany this year.

Not forgetting that amazing win in 2008 at Silverstone where he beat the field by a minute

Bar for 6 points, bad luck and cheating team mates,

Knock off the “cheating” nonsense. Hamilton is clearly an exceptional talent, but he lost to Rosberg because he didn’t drive particularly well that year whereas Rosberg had the best year of his career, it didn’t come down to a single race, it was a fairly long slump on Hamilton’s part. The Alonso thing was nasty, but Alonso was also an exceptional talent and his expectation that he would be number 1 was understandable given that he had just won two championsips and Hamilton was a rookie. As I recall, Hamilton threw that championship away by making a rookie mistake near the end of the season. What makes Hamilton’s achievements so exceptional is that he has been teamed with three world champion teammates and none of them managed to outshine him. Dredging up nonsense that he was only beaten because of “cheating” just cheapens his genuine achievements.

His performance in wet and mixed conditions is on another level.

Jenson Button would like a chat about mixed conditions racing

he has been teamed with three world champion teammates and none of them managed to outshine him

Jenson Button would also like a chat about 2011

One out of three ain’t bad, Jenson. 😉

I’m actually a bit of a Button fanboi (swoons) :-). So its worth looking at the wet weather stats in more detail.

Jenson was indeed another excellent wet weather driver. He actually has the highest ratio of wet start / wins versus dry starts / wins of any driver, he won 7 out of 33 wet races and he won 8 out of 179 dry races. So he was almost five times more likely to win a dry race than a wet race. So you could almost make the case the Button was a wet weather specialist.

Hamilton stats don’t show anything like this bump in wet vs dry wins, but that’s be cause he has won so many races! He just wins in all conditions. But until Germany this year he had won the last 9 wet races in a row.

Jenson Button would also like a chat about 2011

From what I recall, he didn’t make Hamilton look ordinary. Button was underrated, he did well against Hamilton, but I don’t think you can really say that Hamilton was eclipsed by him. That’s one of the impressive things about Hamilton, even his worst seasons are still pretty good – coming second to world champions is nothing to be ashamed of.

That’s why I said “mixed” for JB. Remember Canada…… (and I’m not even a JB fan)

hols2

Hamilton is clearly an exceptional talent, but he lost to Rosberg because he didn’t drive particularly well that year whereas Rosberg had the best year of his career, it didn’t come down to a single race, it was a fairly long slump on Hamilton’s part.

It did come down to one race – Malaysia. Rosberg crashed into a Ferrari at the start and ended up at the back. Hamilton was leading the race but had an engine failure. If he’d simply made it to the end in first place and Nico finished second, he would have won the championship by 2 points.

And even with that loss, he still won 10 out of 21 races that year, so a pretty small slump.

Great drive by Nico that season though.

I got the impression early in 2016 that Hamilton just thought he was going to win and didn’t need to try that hard. Once he’d sealed the 2015 title he didn’t win another race, appeared to take it easy. then seemed to open 2016 by not trying very hard again. Rosberg had had a talk with himself over the winter, really upped his game in the early part of 2016 and by the time Hamilton cottoned on to the fact that he really had a fight on his hands it was too late, he closed the gap at the end of the season but not enough.
Rosberg, whilst clearly not as good as Hamilton, certainly was good enough to capitalise if Hamilton took his eye off the ball.
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And with the what ifs. yes it’s so close to being 8, 2007 and 2016 could easily have gone the other but so could 2008. Likewise, Schumacher is so close to having 9, Damon Hill was only one Schumacher ‘misjudgement’ away from being a double world champ, if it hadn’t rained in Japan Lauda could have had 4, if Senna had rejoined properly after his push start…, so many deciders could have gone the other way. Who remembers Peter Collins?

andrewh nailed it. Hamilton dozed off and by the time he woke from his nap, Rosberg was miles ahead. It didn’t come down to one race, it came down to a whole season where Rosberg maximized his potential and Hamilton didn’t.

2015/16 Lewis had some issues with his Dad and Scherzinger whom he was seeing at the time.   Although not detailed, he got distracted mentally.   As soon as that episode was over his results picked up.

Again not detailed but if you look at the trend, Lewis pretty much admits via social media when his head isn’t 100% in the game he’s not up to par.   He said the same this weekend, the inference being he spent so much time moaning about the bumps in practise he’d convinced himself the weekend was rubbish.   He alluded to resetting his attitude over night pre-race and we saw the result.

This is one thing I like about him – he’s made a conscious decision and a day to day effort to be a top level F1 World Champion and thats how he operates, but from time to time he’s fallible like the rest of us but he is capable of an extraordinary amount of dedication and focus.  I think thats why some people dislike like him because he’s quite happy to say no to a distraction, and is all in for F1 (currently).

hols2

Member

andrewh nailed it. Hamilton dozed off and by the time he woke from his nap, Rosberg was miles ahead. It didn’t come down to one race, it came down to a whole season where Rosberg maximized his potential and Hamilton didn’t.

Yeah you said that before but it’s not true.
It did come down to one race: Malaysia. The ‘slump’ you keep saying about was 4 races, of which he had to start from the back at one of those 4 (China) because of a gearbox failure and missed out on Q3 because of a MGU failure after Q2 in Sochi therefore started from tenth. The other two he took pole.

This is one thing I like about him – he’s made a conscious decision and a day to day effort to be a top level F1 World Champion/part-time rapper and thats how he operates

HTHs

It did come down to one race: Malaysia. The ‘slump’ you keep saying about was 4 races, of which he had to start from the back at one of those 4 (China) because of a gearbox failure and missed out on Q3 because of a MGU failure after Q2 in Sochi therefore started from tenth. The other two he took pole.

Or to sum up, because its motor racing

Points were scored across the entire season. Hamilton had opportunities to do better at any race that he finished without winning. Therefore it didn’t come down to a single race. It’s not a knockout tournament where a single bad performance sees you eliminated.

Hamilton does have unconvincing weekends from time to time but what’s impressive is his ability—even by the standards of elite sportspeople—to deal with them, rationalise them, move on and get back in the saddle every time. It’s rare if ever that he doesn’t bounce back at the following race. And his unconvincing weekends are almost always just being a bit off the pace, he very rarely makes mistakes. He’s crashed in qualifying, what, twice in the past three or four years? He rarely locks a wheel, rarely has an on-track collision, and never puts himself in a vulnerable position (well, almost never—going round the outside of Verstappen at turn 1 in Mexico was pretty risky). Add to that his ability to work with the team, his qualifying pace, his wheel-to-wheel prowess and his ability to drive round a lot of mechanical issues, and it’s a combination that no-one else has.

Some people have been better than him in some areas, but not by much, and no-one comes close to putting all of that together and keeping it nailed down year after year. Doesn’t matter who you compare him to; the only one I’d say comes close is Alonso. Vettel’s the perfect opposite of Hamilton’s ability to avoid mistakes and to bounce back after them (though it’s good to see he seems to have largely dug him out of a long, long slump—though he now seems to lack the fire he had at Red Bull). Button and Bottas have been quicker on various weekends, and Button did a supreme job in 2011, but they’re both prime examples of drivers who are inextricably linked with the phrase “on his day”, which says it all. Rosberg did an outstanding job and was never much off Hamilton’s pace, but again one thing says it all: he boiled himself dry beating Hamilton and knew he couldn’t keep it up, when Hamilton’s just a juggernaut that relentlessly sets the bar every year.

Looking back at all the promise he showed in 2007 (which, in the 35ish years I’ve been watching, I’d rate as the most impressive rookie year the sport’s seen, the other contenders being Schumacher and Villeneuve) he’s delivered, that’s for sure. It was a shame he so narrowly missed out on writing an astonishing fairly tale that year, but he’s writing a different and no less impressive one now.

hols2

Member
andrewh nailed it. Hamilton dozed off and by the time he woke from his nap, Rosberg was miles ahead. It didn’t come down to one race, it came down to a whole season where Rosberg maximized his potential and Hamilton didn’t.

That’s how I recall 15/16 as well. Hammy went to sleep as soon as he’d won in 15 and, IIRC, Rosberg won the last 3 races of 15 and the first 3 of 16. Hammy was away partying whilst Rosberg was building momentum.

Also don’t forget, 16 took so much from Rosberg he had to immediately retire (presumably to save being found out :-)) whilst Hammy is still here and 5 championships ahead of his former pal.

Actually, I think losing to Rosberg was the best thing that could have happened to Hamilton. I think he realized that he underestimated Rosberg and lost focus. He has never made that mistake again, he has just been relentless ever since.

but they’re both prime examples of drivers who are inextricably linked with the phrase “on his day”, which says it all.

I think that it’s fairer to say that they are both drivers handicapped by being team-mates with perhaps the greatest driver in the modern era rather than any variable performance of their own.

The only possible mark against Hamilton is that he has been beaten by his team mates, whereas Schumacher wasn’t. But its not really a fair comparison as Schumacher never raced against drivers of the same quality as Hamilton’s teammates and they often had number 2 status written into their contracts. Hamilton was always on equal terms (as far as his team was concerned) with his teammates.

And as you say, he’s really not looked back after 2016.

I think another aspect that gets overlooked is how conducts himself, and how he wins. There will always be an air of controversy attached to Schumacher and to a lesser extent Vettel (Multi 21!) and Alonso (Honest guv, I didn’t know Jr was going to bring out the safety car). There is none of that with Hamilton. He’s one of the cleanest racers out there, yes he pushes hard but very rarely oversteps what is fair. Very few drivers have a bad word to say about him.

Was it 2017 when he let Bottas back passed him at the end of the Hungary GP, after they had agreed to swap places so Hamilton could try and catch the Ferraris? He couldn’t get passed and let Bottas back into 3rd at the end of the race, it cost him 3 points but he said after he wanted win the championship “the right way”

Knock off the “cheating” nonsense.

I won’t because in one of the pre-race interviews on Sky F1 this year, he practically admitted that he cheated at Monaco by faking understeer to block the track and prevent Hamilton getting a better time.

Hamilton wouldn’t have done this and I don’t believe he ever would. He may at times be taciturn, he may even be/seem petulant at times, but he’s a proper sportsman and believes in sportsmanlike conduct.

I think that it’s fairer to say that they are both drivers handicapped by being team-mates with perhaps the greatest driver in the modern era rather than any variable performance of their own.

Nah, I’d disagree. Bottas especially is pretty variable: his qualifying pace is inconsistent—ranging from mediocre to faster than Hamilton “on his day”—and his races arguably even more so; and if memory serves that was equally true when he was alongside Massa in the Williams. Button’s “on his day”ness was generally more about sensitivity to car setup than inconsistency, but the net result is basically similar. I don’t think Button was fazed by having either Hamilton or Alonso as a teammate, it’s just a case that “on his day” he was a match for both of them and other times he wasn’t.

He couldn’t get passed and let Bottas back into 3rd at the end of the race, it cost him 3 points but he said after he wanted win the championship “the right way”

Yup, a stark contrast to Schumacher and (perhaps even more so IMO) Alonso. And you can look at that sort of behaviour naively (ie you take it at face value and it’s just the honourable thing to do) or cynically (ie it’s an investment in your teammate’s loyalty which pays back later), and either way it’s a good strategy and most likely one of a number of factors in Hamilton having six titles when Alonso—arguably even better behind the wheel—never scored a third.

he practically admitted that he cheated at Monaco by faking understeer to block the track and prevent Hamilton getting a better time.

Who are we talking about here? Alonso or Rosberg? The Alonso/Hamilton thing was nasty and Alonso definitely Alonso at his worst. From what I know, Alonso assumed he was being signed as number 1 driver and felt that the team was favoring Hamilton, then lost his shit really badly. That was a pity because Alonso was a supremely gifted driver and his career results don’t really reflect how good he was, regardless of what an utter prick he could be.

As far as Rosberg “cheating” goes, it’s pretty obvious that the relationship between the drivers was bad and that Hamilton didn’t have a high opinion of Rosberg, but I don’t think there’s any credible case that Rosberg cheated.

I’m a big LH fan and I think his clean racing should be more of a standout than it is.
I love the way he seems to strike fear into other drivers when he is behind them. He’s made most drivers make mistakes, famously Vettel on more than one occasion. He is relentless and wants to race hard 100% in every race – the only frustrations you hear from him is when he can’t do that because of strategy or tyres etc.

All drivers in F1 have standout features. Ricardo has his amazing passes under braking, Button with his wet weather prowess, Verstappen with his overtaking, Alonso in being able to drive any car to its limit but LH seems to have 98% of the level of all those skills.

Who are we talking about here? Alonso or Rosberg? … I don’t think there’s any credible case that Rosberg cheated.

Rosberg, Monaco 2014. Personally I always felt his steering inputs looked contrived, not what you’d expect to see at that point on the circuit. There’s a hump on the approach to Mirabeau and to my eye it looked like he may have been attempting to coax the car into losing stability over that.

But it’s easy to say stuff from watching TV, of course.

All drivers in F1 have standout features. Ricardo has his amazing passes under braking, Button with his wet weather prowess, Verstappen with his overtaking, Alonso in being able to drive any car to its limit…

…Grosjean with his cookery

Have we forgot Austria 2016 – another ‘steering failure’ for Rosberg! 🙂

And the other Rosberg ‘steering failure’ – he must had swerved to avoid a rabbit…

See, I know I’m in the minority but I actually side with Rosberg on the Austria move. To my mind it’s what Brundle said was key to Senna being a formidable opponent: that he’d put his car in a position where the other guy chose whether to back off or have a crash (which is also something I think Verstappen excelled at in his first season). I don’t see a problem with turning in late to prevent someone starting to pass round the outside; it’s quite different to moving across when someone’s already alongside. On that occasion Hamilton chose to turn in rather than wait for Rosberg to turn in, and he was always at Rosberg’s mercy. He got lucky that Rosberg suffered more damage than he did.

I think if you’re going to point the finger at Rosberg for unsporting steering in a race, that’s Barcelona.

To my mind it’s what Brundle said was key to Senna being a formidable opponent:

Brundle – the F1 driver most suited to the phrase “meh”.
Senna – most overrated driver I can think of. I remember his racing – didn’t rate the way he raced back then and still don’t understand why he is so revered now.

Brundle – the F1 driver most suited to the phrase “meh”.
Senna – most overrated driver I can think of.

Not that either of those opinions is relevant to the point, but hey 😉

I think Brundle admits he was good but not great in single-seaters, he was always more at home in sports cars.

Senna’s reputation undoubtedly benefits from being frozen in time, but I think it’s fair to say that there are plenty of moments in his career that demonstrate an uncommon ability and the fact that he was a formidable opponent. Suzuka 1990 is the ultimate example of formidable driving in the modern era: he had the confidence to state his intentions in advance and to stand by his word so steadfastly that he not only took his opponent out of the race but made him consider retiring from the sport immediately. I mean, it’s not an example of honourable driving by any stretch of the imagination, but formidable it certainly was.

Senna’s reputation undoubtedly benefits from being frozen in time, but I think it’s fair to say that there are plenty of moments in his career that demonstrate an uncommon ability and the fact that he was a formidable opponent

Senna is probably the closest rival to Hamilton in terms of ability over a single lap, his pole position record vs starts is remarkably similar.

He was capable of some other-wordly performances, particularly in the wet, but then he wasn’t without errors either. Monaco 88 sums it up perfectly he out qualifies everyone by nearly 2 seconds a lap, I think in the Senna documentary he described it as “driving beyond any conscious understanding of how I was doing it”. In the race, while a minute in front of the field he bins it at Portier.

Ultimately despite his undoubted talent he never demonstrated the consistency the Hamilton has, (but then we’ll never know what might have been)

All drivers in F1 have standout features. Ricardo has his amazing passes under braking,

Ricciardo is an excellent example of why you need to be good at all aspect of racing to win consistently. Hes probably the best wheel-to-wheel racer on the grid, some of his overtaking moves just beggar belief. His race management is clearly pretty good too because most of his victories have come from less than ideal starting postions – but he makes up for it by thinking on his feet. But hes in those compromised starting positions because a lot of his qualifying performances are bobbins. Moving to Renault doesn’t seem to have been the best of decisions either!

Brundle – the F1 driver most suited to the phrase “meh”.

Really? Let me introduce you to Luca Badoer, Andrea De Cesaris, Olivier Grouillard, Stefan Johansson, etc etc etc. Brundle was a very good driver, plenty good enough to have won a GP had his cards fallen differently, and as observed above, he was a monster in a sports car.

Senna – most overrated driver I can think of. I remember his racing – didn’t rate the way he raced back then and still don’t understand why he is so revered now.

3 times world champion, won a quarter of his GPs, on pole for 40% of them, still holds records for most wins leading throughout a Grand Prix, most consecutive pole positions, most consecutive front row starts, most consecutive wins at the same Grand Prix, most pole positions at the same Grand Prix, most consecutive pole positions at the same Grand Prix, most consecutive podiums at the same Grand Prix, highest percentage of front row starts in a season. Yeah, a real piker….

People loved him for the same reason they loved Villeneuve – as Scheckter once said of Giles, he had a rage to win. Total commitment, outstanding talent and a hard, hard driver.

Ultimately despite his undoubted talent he never demonstrated the consistency the Hamilton has,

Seriously? He wasn’t too bad on that front! 🙂

hols2

Member

Actually, I think losing to Rosberg was the best thing that could have happened to Hamilton. I think he realized that he underestimated Rosberg and lost focus. He has never made that mistake again, he has just been relentless ever since.

Agreed. To expand on my previous point, 2015 was a bit of a walkover for him, it appears he thought 2016 would be easy, didn’t try that hard whilst Rosberg had been having words with himself over the winter and gave it everything in 2016 and it was too late when Hamilton woke up. This year could have been very similar, 2018 was another walkover, Bottas spent the winter at the Rosberg school of sock-pulling-up and came out all guns blazing in the early part of the year. Hamilton had indeed learnt from 2016 and fought from day 1. No-one in F1 is a slouch, even someone of Hamilton’s calibre can’t afford to give a slightly lesser driver like Rosberg or Bottas an inch or he’ll get a repeat of 2016. The fact that he can sustain that level of performance for so long, early ’16 excepted, is seriously impressive.

Hmm. Quotes the wrong way around

This 2015/16 point seems to be being laboured but my post dismissed.

Hamilton wasnt entirely “asleep”.  You dont get F1 podiums or even survive races by being asleep.   He was distracted by activity on the outside also.

He was in a high profile relationship with Nicole Scherzinger which they both wanted to continue.  But as she pressured him to settle down – no doubt citing the F1 calender as an issue – they found themselves emotionally challenged.  It hit Hamilton hard but eventually he made the hard decision the F1 came first, and they split. Some issues with his dad also at that point.

Since then he’s lived the choice he made and on the girlfriend basis seems not to engage in relationships in favor of F1 aside from the odd weekend/party with Rita Ora and a couple of others.

So not asleep per se, but distracted yes.

Bar for 6 points, bad luck and cheating team mates, Lewis would have had 8 championships by now. He was so close in his 2007 rookie year with Alonso and again in 2016 only losing to Rosberg due to cheating (Monaco) and bad luck (Engine fail).

Who are we talking about here? Alonso or Rosberg? … I don’t think there’s any credible case that Rosberg cheated.

Rosberg, Monaco 2014. Personally I always felt his steering inputs looked contrived, not what you’d expect to see at that point on the circuit.

Problem is that Hamilton won Monaco in 2016, the year that Rosberg won the championship, and Rosberg won Monaco in 2014 and 2015, both years in which Hamilton won the championsip. I don’t understand what kind of space-time distortion could lead to Rosberg’s 2014 win counting as cheating that cost Hamilton the 2016 title.

In 2007, McLaren were excluded for cheating, so it could be argued that Hamilton was a cheat too. The spying thing happened because Alonso threated to tell the authorities, so Alonso obviously knew they were cheating. That makes it pretty likely that Hamilton knew too.

I see Palmer’s latest column is a masterclass of what-iffery-fuelled confirmation bias:

“By the end of the race, [Hamilton] was just a few laps from winning, despite being on an inferior strategy to Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen, by putting in a marathon stint on a set of hard tyres.”

Yeah, right Jolyon. Aside from the minor point that five other drivers did similar or longer stints on the same tyres, there’s the more significant one that given another few laps—or even a lack of yellows in the last couple—Verstappen would have been past Hamilton well before Hamilton was in position behind Bottas.

It’s a shame about Palmer’s columns. Initially they read like a rational and level-headed view of things but now they seem to be pretty similar to a bunch of jerks having their reckon on internet forums 🙂

I agree with Bez re. car positioning. If you place your car where your opponent then can’t make the move they want, you win.

Albon confirmed at Red Bull for 2020, Gasly & Kvyat at Toro Rosso or whatever they’ll be called next year