TAKE IT TO THE MAX

While hothead Verstappen blew it in Bahrain, Lewis kept his cool and showed this year he’ll...

SO, what if Lewis Hamilton had been hounding Max Verstappen rather than the other way y around in Sunday’s s Bahrain Grand Prix? ?

I have a firm answer, er, albeit only surmise. The he seven-time world champion on would have made the win in stick by passing the other r car and claiming victory.

Hamilton, of course, , won anyway, withstanding the advance from behind — exhibiting a cigarette paper-wide advantage in race craft that is one difference that makes him, as I wrote yesterday, by a small margin, and based on the evidence of the moment, the greatest driver in the world today. Why so?

EXPERIENCE

HaMILTOn has developed his natural skills as an all-out racer, a pugilist, to combine with an appreciation of how best to conserve his tyres to maximum benefit. His all-round ability to read a race and play the long game is something he has honed since he lost the world title to nico Rosberg in 2016. He has now become the complete performer.

If there is any diminution of his outright pace — he is aged 36 — then that is compensated for by his overall understanding of the equipment he sits in.

He has tempered the slight impetuosity he showed in his early years, the desire to press home his natural talent by sheer bravura. He has found a way that allows him to keep in perfect balance the needs of the minute and the longer demands of a maturing race.

Verstappen, perhaps more visceral and untrained, relies more on gut instinct, on making his mark emphatically, pressing home his point when he sees the first opportunity, sometimes to his cost.

at 23, he is a newcomer to the title battle. He has shown his obvious class but is less wellschooled in the demands of the fight at the front of the field and testing his abilities in white heat. He thinks he has every answer — and certainly he has most of them — but he cannot be certain he possesses all of them. He will find out with the rest of us.

Hamilton, by contrast, was thrown into the top echelon as early as his first season, in 2007, when in a competitive McLaren he was toe-to-toe with teammate Fernando alonso and the then-strong Ferraris.

TEMPERAMENT

HaMILTOn is battle-hardened and, even if he routinely voices concerns over the radio to his race engineer Peter Bonnington, he keeps his cool, working through the race in his own mind, like alonso, the only other man on the grid who can be spoken of in the same breath as him and Verstappen.

His composure was on display on Sunday. He drove very fairly, very cleanly. He always does, just as another world champion Kimi Raikkonen does. With Hamilton, lton, you don’t fret that a silly smash mash is around every corner.

That was seen when he and Verstappen came into a close dance around Turn Four. Indeed, deed, Hamilton suggested that Turn One is where he would have made the decisive move, rather ather than Turn Four. There was, s, to be harsh, a do-or-die element nt to the Red Bull driver’s hurrah. h.

Verstappen also failed over the closing three laps to put ut himself in a position to take e on Hamilton again. If roles s had been reversed, a mature e Lewis would have refocused d and mounted a second d assault on the man in front.

The heat is on: Hamilton (main) and Verstappen REUTERS

DESIRE

THeIR motivations are the same but different. Both men have massive drive to win. Verstappen wants to prove that he is world champion material — he is. Hamilton, always only validated in his own mind by winning week after week, feels this urge undiminished despite 96 race wins.

It is what he lives for.

He is further stimulated by the need to answer the suggestion he is a son of fortune driving what has been, until Red Bull took a possible edge this season, the all- dominant Mercedes. George Russell stepping in and acquitting himself so ably in Bahrain last December, when Hamilton was out with Covid-19, is an extra immediate spur. Both title rivals are energised by the fight between them — a test of virility in the only language they know. They are pleased to be in a fight. The outcome will play a large part in defining them both.