For sure, the very tough defeat he suffered in Abu Dhabi 2021 against Verstappen and Red Bull when he was cherishing the eighth title that would have left him alone at the top of Olympus, was the hardest moment he has had to deal with. hamilton in Formula 1. But, at least, and despite the final disappointment, that year he was in the fight for the World Cup, something he could not say last season in which Mercedes could only see from afar how Ferrari tried, without any success , fight Max for the title. In fact, it was Lewis’s first winless year.
And that is where the Briton claims his career in F1. In an interview with the Dutch magazine Formule 1, remind you that no one who has exceeded 300 grand prix has managed to add a victory. “But there has never been a pilot like me”, Hamilton, leader in wins, pole positions, fastest laps and many other statistical sections, is confident that he will not suffer the same fate as the rest of the drivers that make up that group: Alonso (356 races), Raikkonen (350), Barrichello (323), Schumacher (307) and Button (306).
That will be the motivation of the seven-time champion in the course that starts in Bahrain on March 5 and he hopes that it will turn out better than what Mercedes and he proposed at the beginning of 2022. “We wanted to hit back after 2021. That’s where our drive came from”, says Lewis, who soon saw that this would not be possible with a W13 that was not up to par with its rivals at the top of the grid: “There was a moment when I thought: ‘God, I can’t really fight for the title with this car.
Same philosophy as Wolff
The easy summary, coming from the years of dominance to come, is that 2022 was a failure for Hamilton and Mercedes. However, the Englishman did not end up angry or frustrated after the season and the same philosophy with which Toto Wolff, his boss, wants to raise the German team is applied: “If I can say anything about the past year, it’s that as a team we’ve only gotten more resilient and determined.” Now it’s up to them to show that they can also fight in the mud to rise from their ashes.