Just equalled the all time record for title wins. He pretty much holds all records now. Is he the greatest British sportsman ever?
He’s a great driver but nowhere near the best Brit ever. His sport is too small to use domination as a guide to compare with other sports. He’s obviously good having the best car does help...a lot. Still prefer F1 from years ago when the driver was in charge of the car and not a computer. For best I would be thinking of perhaps Steven Redgrave or someone like him. Yes a minority sport but I still admire the man for what he did and what he overcame especially for his last Olympics. Plus he doesn’t appear to be an overpaid, arrogant and self righteous prick.
His team mates have always had the same equipment as him yet can’t get anywhere near him! How do you explain that?
I just can’t bring myself around to liking him and I don’t know why. He’s clearly talented and clearly the best. Yes people say he has the car but he’s in the car and he’s there for a reason. F1 is nearly as boring as watching Steve Bruce’s pressers. So anyone enjoying it needs a kick to the balls. Having said that I bet LH bank account is rather fresh.
Agree with @the #Cans Master (for once). Lewis Hamilton is obviously a top driver and Mercedes have been the best team for some time now but fact that its the combination of man and machine that wins detracts from his personal achievements. For me Mo Farah has to be up there. He dominated long distance track running while competing. I doubt he will be able to replicate that in the marathon but still an amazing haul of Olympic and World Track medals. Apparently he also beat Chippy in the Great North Run.
As a person he's a cock, always has been and always will. A first class grade A cock. As a driver he's very good. So overall, a very good first class cock.
I think he definitely has to be up there with the greatest ever sports competitors this country has produced. It will always be subjective though as each era and each sport requires different qualities. For those who argue that he is only successful because he is in the best car, just as many did with Schumacher, they forget that the driver is one of the most important parts of the engineering team. Neither of them joined the team with the best car, but both helped to make it the best car of their era. The very best drivers are able to read the way a car is performing and feed back to the engineers the way in which changes can be made. This is such an important part of motor racing and both Hamilton and Schumacher were recognised as being in a different league to their peers at doing this. The other thing that sets Hamilton apart from his competitors is his amazing awareness during a race. He sees things that other drivers just don't see while driving on the limit. Yesterday was a great example of that. While most pit walls were informing their drivers that there was a chance of more rain before the end of the race, Lewis was informing his pit wall that there was a chance of rain because he could see the dark clouds heading towards the circuit. He is in a different league to every driver he is competing against.
Pretty obviously one of the best sportsperson we've ever produced. If he wasn't such a cheesy cock end I'm sure he'd be getting a lot more love for it. To be honest I think those who crib him and say "its the car" simply don't watch much F1. I've always been a big F1 fan and watch most races. I can separate Hamilton the driver from Hamilton the person. He is honestly in my humble opinion an absolutely stupendous driver, and he's always been seriously quick. The thing is he's just got better and better. I look at Max V now and he is a carbon copy of a young Hamilton. People often say Max would beat him with the same tools, I have my doubts. Lewis has mastered the art of F1. He wins races he really shouldn't, just on pure race craft. His ability to manage tyres (sadly key in modern F1) is testament to how much he has improved as a driver as he used to be like Max burning through his tyres at key stages. He obviously has a great team around him but if you look at how he has mullered Rosberg and Bottas, it tells you he is more than just the car. His all round game to adapt to conditions etc is pretty amazing. He and Bottas had the same car on Sunday, it was clear from Practice they were gonna struggle at that track, particularly at getting heat into the tyres in the wet. Both struggled in qualifying. Bottas must have spun at least 5 times in the race and finished way down the field. At one stage Hamilton was a full pit stop behind and falling away. Unlike Bottas he didn't panic and simply assessed the situation. Once he realised that he could simply turn his Inters into semi slicks, he just overruled the team and led them a victory they shouldn't have got. It was the sign of a true genius behind the wheel. Still an absolute cock end though.
I agree with everything you say about him as a driver. He is superb. I do think he gets a tough time for his personality though when he isn't that different to most of the other F1 drivers. He got a lot of criticism in his early career for the way he developed 'brand Hamilton' on social media, but he was just the first of a new generation and ahead of the game in embracing that side of things. He was also criticised for having too many outside interests. Compare him to the next generation and if anything they embrace that side of things even more. The likes of Lando, Albon, Russell and Leclerc do far more of that than Lewis ever did. He gets criticised for being sulky and a bad loser. Apart from the fact that a lot of very successful sportspeople are inherently bad losers, others have done far worse without being criticised to the same degree. It isn't even a new thing. James Hunt lamping a marshall, Piquet fighting with another driver in the gravel trap, Schumacher fighting his way into the McLaren garage or taking out Hill and Villeneuve - all worse than Hamilton. Seb switching the podium numbers at the end of the race or deliberately driving into Hamilton's side pods never received the hate that Hamilton gets. I've never met Lewis Hamilton but from first hand accounts from people I know and trust, Hamilton is usually a nice guy to deal with but a bit of a cock on race day. I have met a lot of other F1 drivers from the period just before Hamilton started and most of them were exactly the same. In my experience the only ones who weren't cocks on race day were Jarno Trulli and Rubens Barrichello. The only driver I met who was a cock every single time, race day or not, was Eddie Irvine. I know that isn't exactly a scientific survey, but you can only say what you see.
I don't mind the sulky stuff. When someone enjoys losing, they are dead to me. As a man who would go to the end of the earth to win a game of tiddlywinks, I feel his passion. I have 4 brothers, and life is one big competition. Even now, fantasy football has descended into arguments and accusations of cheating - lol how do you cheat at fantasy. To be fair if you listen to him when he doesn't win, he is still respectful. I mean more he is very cheesy and typical of a social media whore. I'm sure if you really know him, he's a nice guy. I just find his efforts to appear overly wholesome a bit sickly. What i do like is he at least acknowledges how hypocritical he is in terms of the sport he is involved in, while throwing his weight behind climate change agendas etc. As always with modern day sportsmen, I am less bothered about liking them. What I do know is, Hamilton is one of the best drivers of an F1 car to have ever lived.
