Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes team is in awe of the seven-time world champion as the 2021 Formula 1 championship battle reaches its conclusion.
Performance-wise, Hamilton’s enjoying his best spell of the season. When you consider he started the year with three wins in four, you understand how significant that is.
Title rival and championship leader Max Verstappen still has more wins and poles than any driver but Hamilton’s taken a step at the perfect time.
He’s topped qualifying at three of the last four events (only denied pole in Turkey and Brazil because of a penalty and a disqualification) and won two races in a row just when his championship challenge risked fizzling out.
Hamilton’s two consecutive wins could hardly have come in more different circumstances: a stunning recovery in Brazil from the back of the grid in the sprint race and a small grid penalty for the grand prix itself, then a dominant win from pole in Qatar.
To win at Interlagos, Hamilton had to gain 25 places across the sprint and the grand prix and overcome Verstappen. It was simpler in Qatar, keeping Verstappen at arm’s length after a commanding qualifying performance gave Hamilton pole and a qualifying transgression earned a grid penalty for Verstappen.
“Brazil was the best race I’ve ever seen him race,” reckons Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.
“In qualifying, that lap was unbelievable when you think how close Red Bull have been to us.
“He had the race [in Qatar] under control from start to finish. He actually didn’t have to work as hard as we thought he might have had to.
“But Lewis knows what needs to be done to win these championships, the team knows what needs to be done, and we’re all just getting on and doing it.
“Having him there in the car is just a huge boost to our confidence.”
Hamilton’s harshest critics will undoubtedly have concluded already that this spell of form is entirely car-dependent – as if Verstappen’s peaks this season haven’t been facilitated by Red Bull having the stronger package at times.
That’s an uncharitable interpretation. When Hamilton’s tapping into his immense reserves of experience, intelligence and speed, he’s borderline unstoppable. There’s a commonly held view that no driver on the grid responds as well to having his back against a wall, either. That helps unleash Hamilton’s full potential.
This is why Mercedes thinks that what happened in Brazil, with his disqualification in qualifying before of a failed rear wing test that Mercedes concluded was the result of some loose bolts, has fired Hamilton up.
“They woke up the lion on Saturday in Interlagos,” says Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
“He is absolutely on it. Brutal. And cold-blooded. This is the best in Lewis and we’ve seen it in the past. He’s right there.
“When adversity happens then it just takes him to a place where he’s able to mobilise superhero powers. And it was the adversity that triggered that in Interlagos.”
It’s worth noting, though, that Hamilton is not just suddenly a few percent faster. He and Mercedes have also cut out little imperfections at just the right time.
Hamilton’s season has had a few more oscillations than Verstappen. While far from perfect, Verstappen is single-minded and intensely focused, which has maybe made his level more consistent.
Hamilton, for lack of a better way of putting it, is a more outwardly emotional person and perhaps slightly more prone to disturbance because of it. While that can be perceived as a weakness it can also unleash itself as a ferocious strength.
Maybe the after-effects of Hamilton’s positive COVID-19 diagnosis late last year fed into that. That sort of thing can have underlying health implications for months afterwards. And nobody reasonable could have seen how Hamilton looked and behaved on the podium in Hungary, one of the most physically demanding races of the year, and concluded he was putting it on.
This season, Hamilton has had small lapses and off days. We’ve seen that more in 2021 than in recent memory, with the main examples of Hamilton erring being his off at Imola and his Azerbaijan restart error.
The easy answer is to suggest that’s because he’s actually being challenged. The more complex reality is probably a combination of that, how he is as a person, the fact he has a hot-and-cold car, and perhaps a long COVID hangover.
Mercedes has had its own challenges, such as the set-up woes in Monaco, the strategy call that left him taking the restart in Hungary solo, and the engine issues that have required penalties (costing Hamilton a likely victory in Turkey). For a while it looked like these imperfections across team and driver might conspire to blunt Hamilton’s title attack.
Now though: “I’m really, really happy with the car. And I feel fit. Fitter than I’ve ever felt, so that’s a positive.”
As explored elsewhere on this site, championship leader Verstappen should not be expected to just roll aside, even when Hamilton is in top form.
But for Hamilton to win this title he needed to up his game and turn an excellent but sometimes inconsistent season into one that was slightly more efficient.
The last four races indicate Hamilton really is at full strength in more ways than one. When he couldn’t win he finished second. When he could win, he did so emphatically.
“I feel great,” said Hamilton. “I feel in the best shape physically that I’ve been in all year. Obviously at the beginning, [I felt] not particularly that well.
“So yeah, I feel great, the car is feeling better than ever, and I feel positive going into these next couple of races.
“They should be quite good for our car, so I’m looking forward to that battle.”
