Mr COMPASSION
With Hamilton in sight of a fifth world title, one man who knows him intimately says forget the image, he’s really …
FOR a man on the edge of his fifth Formula One championship — and sporting legend by any measure — how much does the world know about the real Lewis Hamilton?
We have the public utterances and the myriad social media posts, but what of the boy beneath the gloss?
Here in the Lone Star State, where rain is falling persistently, we went in search of a glimpse behind the mask with the help of James Allison, Mercedes’ technical director, who started with an admission before his general hymn of praise to his champion driver.
‘He will probably be cross with me for saying this, but before I joined Mercedes it sounded to me as if he was saying things that did not have the ring of sincerity to them, and I would think the worst of him. If he said it was his greatest qualifying lap, I’d think why say that when you have done tons of brilliant pole laps?
‘But when you are inside the team with him you know it is sincere. He will tell you candidly that he doesn’t have a brilliant memory, so each lap can seem the best in his mind. He is so pumped by what he has done that his comments are utterly boyish. And utterly charming. But from the outside, I found them utterly charmless.’
Allison, 50, who was poached from Ferrari two years ago, can speak with a profundity that goes beyond the pit-lane chatter about tyre compounds and strategy calls. He lost his wife, Rebecca, to meningitis in 2016. He picks up the story so far as Hamilton touched upon it.
‘He had an entirely unconfected desire to tell me he was sorry about my wife and a willingness to listen afterwards, which was very un-racing driver-ish. Having seen a large range of people try to deal with a shocking event like that, not everyone handles it with grace or convincingly.
‘Many people want the subject not to be there. You can tell when someone is for real on a topic as raw as that. His reaction allowed us seriously to come together and told me that I was dealing with someone who is a good person.
‘Lewis is a superstar and they don’t live the sort of lives we lead. But the man behind the facade has a lot to like about him.’
Allison refers to Billy Monger, the teenage racer who lost both his legs in a British Formula Four race at Donington last year, and his appearance as Hamilton’s guest at the 2017 British Grand Prix. ‘It was a short time after the terrible accident and the scars on his knees were still livid. Lewis spent time with him and it was captured on the cameras. A cynic might have thought that it was a nice thing to do but one that made Lewis look good. ‘Yet what none of the cameras saw was them sitting together talking one to one afterwards for a long time. There was no payback for either of them but their own enjoyment.
‘I found it difficult to see the young boy with those wounds, with his family around who clearly loved him. We all had the opportunity to talk to him but none of us did in the way Lewis did.’
Allison, a Cambridge graduate and son of Air Chief Marshall Sir John Allison, mainly deals with Hamilton the driver, rather than the humanitarian. And he has no doubts about Lewis’s nerveless preparations for this weekend’s tilt at winning the eight points more than Sebastian Vettel that he needs to equal Juan Manuel Fangio on five titles, a feat that would raise him on to the top plinth of British practitioners in the history of organised sport.
Hamilton only gets nervous, Allison says, before speaking to the staff at the factory, feeling the tone of his extemporised speech is important because of the debt of gratitude he owes his racing family. He usually finds the appropriate words, however.
As for Hamilton’s race-day ritual, it will involve a strategy meeting, a wider discussion, a ‘meet and greet’ with Mercedes guests, the driver parade and then 45 minutes of quietness on his own. It is the same build-up and all concerned know he does not want any part of it to overrun, so he can grab that contemplative time before the lights go out.
‘Work-wise, he doesn’t try to own every situation like he is the alpha male in the room,’ said Allison. ‘He knows we all bring different aspects to the team and that he must give us space to do our job for him. His debriefs are not particularly long or short. When something needs talking about they are as long as necessary.
‘He sits there with a little book and writes things down over the weekend. Sometimes he misses something that we told him about. But he puts down what is important to him.
‘He gets stronger through the season. It’s as if he needs to know who his rivals are. And once it gets tighter he becomes more intense. Curiously, he gets easier to work with then. He becomes more forgiving of our screw-ups, more focused on the fight and more powerful as a team-mate. At this time of year he is just a weapon.’