Gold will be precious for Hamilton
LONDON: Lewis Hamilton was seven when mesmerised by the live television images of Nigel Mansell leading from pole to finish at Silverstone with a drive that sparked a track invasion.
Mansell set out on a lap of honour with the union flag before fans swarmed across the circuit and forced him to a halt. Twenty three years on, and Hamilton goes into the British Grand Prix visualising a “perfect weekend” in Northamptonshire.
As world champion and championship leader, he is out to dominate from first practice session to the chequered flag and give Britain reason to cheer. He is thinking about GB gold at Silverstone.
“I hope I can go there and make people proud,” said Hamilton. “I remember watching Nigel Mansell holding the flag in the car.
“It is like the Olympics, like a gold medal, having the flag in the car after winning the Grand Prix. It is the closest thing I can imagine to having a gold medal.
After a pause, he smiled and added: “I might see if I can get one made for myself. I’ve got enough gold.”
He was joking about the medal, although serious about emulating Mansell’s performance in 1992, his fourth and final British Grand Prix win.
“There’s a lot of pressure when you go to your home Grand Prix,” said Hamilton. “Most of it comes from yourself, but there is the expectation because all your fans want you to get the result. There is that added pressure.
“I won last year but I didn’t get pole, so it wasn’t a perfect weekend. And this year that has really been the target, dominating weekends and really conquering the circuit, through practice, qualifying and the race. That has been my target.
“The previous year it was going well and then the tyre blew up.”
Last year was Hamilton’s second British Grand Prix victory. He won in 2008 in the rain, and recalled it as his fondest Silverstone moment when asked at a Petronas event this week.
“I am noticing the years go by,” he said. “The race is gone and it is another year. I might have seven chances at the Silverstone Grand Prix left, it seems like a lot but it isn’t.
“They are very precious opportunities, each and every single one of them. So when you lose out on one the feeling Lap distance: 5.891km (52 laps). Total distance: 306,198km Race lap record: Mark Webber (Australia) Red Bull one minute 33.401 seconds, 2013. 2014 pole: Nico Rosberg (Germany) Mercedes 1:35.766 seconds. 2014 winner: Lewis Hamilton (Britain) Mercedes Start time: 2pm Tyres: Hard (orange), Medium (white) Wins Mercedes have had five one-two finishes this season and won seven of eight races so far. Four-times champion Sebastian Vettel has 40 career wins, double world champion Lewis Hamilton is on 37 and Fernando Alonso 32. Kimi Raikkonen has won 20 races, Jenson Button 15 and Nico Rosberg 11. One more victory for Vettel would put him level with the late Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna in third place on the all-time lists. Ferrari have won 222 races, McLaren 182, Williams 114 and Red Bull 50. Mercedes have won 36. to come back and do it again the following year is even greater.”
Hamilton flew the union flag from the cockpit of his Mercedes when he clinched the drivers’ title in Abu Dhabi last year and is returning for the first time as a double world champion to the track he considers home.
“I remember my first time there,” said the 30-year-old. “It was a British Go Kart GP when I was about eight or nine and it was a really bad race for me. I crashed into the straw bales.
“I did Formula Renault there, and then I remember standing at the back of the garage at McLaren, looking at the cars and thinking: “One day I want to be in one of those, I want one of those driver’s seats”.
“I think it was when (Juan Pablo) Montoya and Kimi (Raikkonen) were driving. And even though I’ve been going there a long time I still remember that particular day, standing at the back of McLaren.
“Sometimes when I’m sitting in the car in the garage, I feel like I still have that view from behind, looking at me in the car, which is really strange.”
In those days Hamilton was a young test driver. Now all eyes are on his car and, should he win again, he will hope to be presented with the traditional gold trophy and not the red plastic one, designed to represent sponsors Santander, which he was shocked and unimpressed to receive on the podium last year.
“That is the only trophy there is for Silverstone,” said Hamilton, who has already taken this complaint to the top, letting Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone know his views on the trophies.
“We don’t need gold medals,” he added. “It would just be a fake gold medal. We just need to make better trophies. It’s shocking how bad the trophies are.
“Last year they gave me this plastic thing and I’m like: “This is not the trophy”. It was like a GP2 trophy not the Formula One trophy. The gold one is really special.
“At the beginning of my Formula One career the tro- phies were really good, but now they’re just terrible, man. They’re so bad.
“It would be great if each country had a real trophy like that with character that grew over the years because of the history.” – Daily Mail