New car fires Hamilton’s passion
Briton relishing season after Mercedes launch He aims jibe at Rosberg: I never miss team-mates
Lewis Hamilton finds that his mind wanders sometimes to the vexed question of his long-term future in Formula One. As one of sport’s few global icons, he could easily lose himself in his other outlets, from fashion to music to riding the Pacific breakers on his surfboard.
But then he has days like yesterday, when Mercedes present him with another exquisite piece of German engineering, and he is 13 years old again, his passion rekindled and his eyes fixed on nothing but the road ahead.
As the gleaming Mercedes W08, a car designed to sustain three years of Silvers Arrows supremacy, was wheeled out of its Silverstone garage, Hamilton’s eyes lit up at the sight. “I can understand the feeling of wanting to stop and do something different,” he said. “Now and again I have a thought about what I do afterwards. But then I see the car.”
On first inspection, Mercedes’ latest creation is an aesthetic and technological marvel, rejecting the ugly shark-fin design showcased by rival teams in favour of a sleeker but no less aerodynamic look, comprising an elegantly complex front wing and long side pods set up to counter the turbulence around the gigantic rear tyres.
As for the engine, the word on the grapevine is that this Mercedes V6 power plant should cause the team’s nearest challengers to quake with fear. Even so, history teaches Mercedes not to be too cocksure. After all, 2017 marks a season of stark regulation changes, intended to carve up to five seconds off the average lap time through faster cornering.
It is through such overhauls that F1 dynasties tend to fall. In 2009, a drastically rewritten rule book enabled Brawn, a privateer team, to break the stranglehold of McLaren and Ferrari. Five years later, the shift from V8 to V6 engines caused a transfer of power from Red Bull to Mercedes, who have won 51 of the last 59 races.
“If there is such a thing as momentum, it can be disrupted by change,” said Toto Wolff, the Mercedes executive director. “It provides opportunity, but it also provides risk.”
It is a risk that the reigning triple world champions have moved quickly to mitigate by appointing James Allison, the Cambridge engineering graduate for whom they had high regard during his period at Ferrari, as technical director in place of Paddy Lowe.
The other crucial difference in the dynamics at Mercedes, of course, is the replacement of Nico Rosberg, Hamilton’s nemesis throughout three years of tempestuous duels, with Valtteri Bottas.
Even after four years in F1, the Finn is a character who defies easy scrutiny. He is far more approachable than Mika Hakkinen or Kimi Raikkonen, his famously androidlike compatriots, but resolutely unemotional on the public stage. Plus, for all the plaudits he has drawn for his performances at Williams, questions are raised by the fact that in 77 starts he has yet to win.
One doubts that Wolff, who is also Bottas’s manager, would have entrusted him with the most coveted car on the grid without a deep belief in his talent. “I think that if I couldn’t compare or be quicker than Lewis, I would rather stay at home,” he said here, bullishly. “We will see on the track very soon. The stopwatch is not going to lie.”
Hamilton, for his part, appears not to be pining for Rosberg. The German announced his retirement within days of winning a maiden world title, but his sworn adversary has wasted no time in moving to the next chapter. “I’m not sure I’ve ever missed a team-mate in my life,” he said, grinning. “I don’t know all the reasons why Nico decided to stop – but I don’t think like that. I win the championship and then I want to go for it all over again.”
The none-too-coded message was that greatness in this sport has been defined not solely by whether a driver can win a championship but whether he can defend it.
At 32, Hamilton, despite his agonising near-miss in Abu Dhabi three months ago, has already done so, and his only object in 2017 is to become just the fourth driver to be anointed a quadruple F1 champion.
“I’m still competitive, still hungry,” he said. “I’m still racing at my best.” At the start of 2014, as Stan Wawrinka approached his 29th birthday without a major final to his name, you could probably have got odds of 500-1 on him completing the career grand slam.
Yet now, only three years later, Wawrinka has landed major titles in Melbourne, Paris and New York. So his announcement yesterday as a participant at Queen’s – the main build-up event before Wimbledon – carries an extra frisson.
If Wawrinka can master the grass in Barons Court, then lift the Gentleman’s Singles trophy in SW19, he will join the five immortals who have claimed all four biggies in the Open era. It is a mighty target – and one that has eluded such legends as John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras. “I know it is in some people’s minds because I have three titles already,” Wawrinka told
yesterday. “But I don’t have a big thought that I am going to win it. I just want to try to get closer because I have never been that far at Wimbledon and I know how hard it is to win.”
Wawrinka has identified his June