We should all love Lewis, he’s a true British great

THeRe is probably no sport that is less understood than motor racing. Meaning there is no British sportsman more misunderstood than Lewis Hamilton.

It is almost unthinkable that he will fail to clinch the drivers’ championship in Mexico on Sunday. If he finishes in the first seven, he wins; if Sebastian Vettel fails to claim first place, he wins. It should be easy.

And that is the problem with so much of what Hamilton does. People think it is.

They think it’s the car, not the driver; they think it’s the technology, not the man at the helm. They see Hamilton as a pilot, a navigator, a pusher of buttons, no more. He steers, he directs his high- performance vehicle, he points it towards the finishing line and engineering does the rest. Anyone in his seat could do the same.

That is the layman’s view. Take any Formula One driver, give him the machinery at Hamilton’s disposal, and they would be drivers’ champion, too. But that isn’t true. And it misses the greatness, the excellence, the technique, the bravery, the intelligence, all of the qualities we readily acknowledge in athletes from other sports.

No sooner had Anthony Joshua got a title belt in his hands than he was being asked about legacy as if he were Muhammad Ali. Yet Hamilton will equal Juan Manuel Fangio’s five titles provided all goes to plan this weekend, while still struggling for the wider respect he deserves.

Not from his peers. They know what they are up against. It is back home that Hamilton seems underappreciated. We are watching one of the finest British sportsmen of this, or any other, generation.

We are watching one of motor sport’s all-time greats. Yet we don’t really get Formula One, and his achievements are often underappreciated.

At some time, you will have kicked a football. You will have picked up a cricket bat, a tennis racket, you’ll have run a race, or attempted a high jump. But there’s nothing to give you empathy with the sport of F1.

You can’t play it at school, you can’t join a club at the weekend. So, Hamilton’s world is entirely alien to the majority of us. We drive cars, yes. But that’s like saying because you had a Raleigh Racer as a kid, you understand what Chris Froome gives up to win the Tour de France.

Most refuse to acknowledge that F1 is, in essence, a team game, so we don’t understand team orders, either. We don’t like it when a racer is ordered to move aside to let another pass, as happened to Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas in Russia.

Yet such incidents are rare. More noteworthy, but receiving fewer headlines, is Hamilton’s dominance over Bottas in the same car, which is what affords him the right to preferential treatment. Hamilton has beaten Bottas in 13 races this year, discounting Russia, and qualified faster than him in 12.

That Vettel has won five grands prix supports the view Ferrari and Mercedes are well matched. Ferrari won the first two grands prix of 2018, and three of the initial seven. But Hamilton has subsequently been the difference.

Bottas has not won a single race to regain control — it can be speculated he would have done so in Russia, although the team orders took effect early, on lap 26 of 53 — while Hamilton has landed nine. With another driver, it is not guaranteed that Mercedes would have won what will be a fifth straight constructors’ championship.

If Hamilton clinches his fifth individual title in the same race, only Michael Schumacher will have more. Yet there is a feeling Hamilton is often devoid of the respect, or love, afforded his contemporaries.

If the Sports Personality of the Year award is a yardstick of public affection, Hamilton has won fewer than either Damon Hill

or Nigel Mansell. hill and Mansell have a single drivers’ championship each, but four SPOTY awards between them.

hamilton has the opposite: four drivers’ titles and one SPOTY. In tennis terms, he’s Greg Rusedski (also one SPOTY) as opposed to Andy Murray (three).

VARIOuS explanations are offered. hamilton lives as a tax exile? Well, so does Mansell, so does Paula Radcliffe and so did Mo Farah. Too flash, too brash? Tell that to David Beckham, Paul Gascoigne or Daley Thompson, who have all previously received the public vote.

Face it, the majority don’t get it. They don’t appreciate the nuances of hamilton’s sport and career, so they don’t get him. They don’t see that a man does not end up in the cockpit of the best car by luck. Mercedes could have had anyone, but pursued hamilton.

And by the same token, hamilton (right) does not alight on Mercedes without demonstrating a supreme understanding of his sport. Many think Fernando Alonso, who retires this year, is a better driver than his record will show. The fact is, however, his career judgments were a tactical nightmare. he joined a post-Schumacher Ferrari team on the wane and switched to McLaren at the point when he would have been better off in a milk float. As Alexis Sanchez is finding, part of being good at sport is knowing who else is good, too. how often must Sanchez regret overlooking Manchester City for Manchester united — and how often do drivers envy not just hamilton’s race management, but his career management? It should not have worked, this partnership with Mercedes. This is a staid, German company and little about them tallies with his personality. Yet hamilton has made it a magnificent success. They have bent a little to him, but he has also bent to them. he wanted to take the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement during the national anthem at last year’s uS Grand Prix and Mercedes counselled against it. hamilton listened. Then, in Austria this year when Mercedes called hamilton’s race strategy wrong and he was later forced to retire with a fuel problem, chief strategist James Vowles very publicly apologised over the radio. There is an air of calm around hamilton’s progress with Mercedes now, which really should not chime with a man doing his bit to reinvent the old image of F1 drivers as international playboys.

Yet amid the air miles, the glamour and parties, hamilton continues to deliver astonishing consistency. It is his rival, Vettel, who has made blunder after blunder. If hamilton performed as erratically, you can be sure his lifestyle would be questioned.

Maybe this is what cannot be reconciled. That one of the most successful sportsmen in this country’s history refuses to live a life of austerity and denial.

We like our heroes in hair-shirts, but hamilton is not compulsively kicking a rugby ball through the posts like Jonny Wilkinson, or spending Christmas on the other side of the world, alone, in training, like Murray. Just don’t think it comes easy. Nobody reaches this height in any sport without a level of professionalism and self-sacrifice that would relegate most to his slipstream.

hamilton’s tales of growing up in the karting community are full of humility and determination. he carries that work ethic into his life now. It is what underscores his mastery and the reason he deserves to be placed alongside any British contemporary: hoy and Bannister, Botham and Wilkinson, Murray and Perry, Charlton and Moore.

TOTTENHAM’S SMUG BOAST LOOKS SO SPURSY NOW