Hamilton hailed after fourth title

LEADING FORMULA 1 FIGURES hailed Lewis Hamilton as a great of Formula 1 after he secured his fourth world championship.

While Hamilton’s qualifying pace has always been celebrated, Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe, who worked with Hamilton at Mclaren, suggests Hamilton’s racecraft now stands out among the sport’s great champions.

“The style with which he qualifies and races, it is always very exciting,” said Lowe.“his racecraft is probably unparalleled. It would have been great to see him race against the likes of [Ayrton] Senna. Michael [Schumacher] achieved fantastic records but his racecraft was not one of his greatest strengths, for example. Why people love Lewis is they love the way he races.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff suggested this was the hardest of Hamilton’s title wins for Mercedes from a team perspective.“it was certainly the hardest for the team because we had quite some ups ands downs – new car, new tyres, and to accept that this is the reality now, and to progress, was difficult for the team, and took the maximum out of us,”said Wolff.

“I think for Lewis maybe fighting with his team-mate [in previous seasons] was also hard in a different way. Having the enemy in the same team is a different struggle or fight than fighting against Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari.”

Former team-mate Fernando Alonso suggested Hamilton has had it too easy this year with the strength of the Mercedes package.

“It was very easy this year, no opponents,”alonso said.“last year, he had Nico until the last race, fighting every single race.

“This year was too easy. Mercedes four races to the end constructors’ champion, Hamilton three races before the end drivers’champion.”

Hamilton is now the first

British driver to win four world championships, and is behind only Michael Schumacher (seven) and Juan Manuel Fangio (five) in terms of the number of titles won.