LEWIS HAMILTON CLAIMS A SIXTH WORLD TITLE AND BECOMES THE KING OF SILVERSTONE
When: All season
Where: All over the globe
It is easy to overlook the achievements of Lewis Hamilton this season. He is the best driver on the grid, and he is in the best car, so victory is a foregone conclusion, right?
Well wrong, it isn’t, and his sixth world championship should not be dismissed. Sure, Ferrari didn’t step up to the plate as it should have done and Hamilton’s intra-team battle with the sister machine of Valtteri Bottas started to come apart by early May, but there was still hard work to be done.
There was a new Hamilton this season, a small change which cemented the foundations of his title charge that has not been seen before: he came out of the blocks flying. In some of the previous title wins, he has started slowly only to go on a crushing run of victories across the summer to nail down the crown. This year, he had a 29-point buffer by the time the circus rolled out of Canada in the second week of June. One month later, he was breaking records at Silverstone to become the British Grand Prix’s most successful driver.
Still, he won 11 races – more than half of those on the schedule – and his fighting spirit was never more evident than in Mexico, where he clearly didn’t have the fastest car but his determination behind the wheel and a cute strategy from the pitwall pushed him to glory and to within touching distance of the crown, which he lifted in America seven days later.
He has predicted a tougher fight next year with Ferrari hopefully unlocking its pace and Red Bull finally capitalising on the potential of Honda. It is a battle he says he is relishing, but any foe will have to operate at their highest level to depose the king.
Was this merely a staging post to the Briton doing the unthinkable and equaling Michael Schumacher’s record of seven championships? Probably yes, but each title deserves the same merit, so his stunning year will sit proudly with the others. MJ