To every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Well said, Mr Newton. In F1, to every action by Sebastian Vettel, there’s an equal and opposite reaction from the five-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton.
Remember the name!
What’s the name of the driver who clinched the 2018 F1 season? Lewis Hamilton, right? Wrong!
Sounds a bit incomplete.
It’s five-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton.
It seems that the picture is there with the frame, the man on the throne, the winner on the podium, the adjectives run endlessly.
There’s nothing that the Ferraris could do to stop the man from Mercedes from becoming a fulfiller of his dream, the climber of a rare peak: five-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton.
Fangio did it then. Lewis has done it now. Glory lies in making most of the present. Interestingly, even as Hamilton didn’t win, didn’t make the most of the 2018 Mexican Grand Prix, surprisingly leaving fans with the sight of spotting him away from the podium, his usual home in F1, he was able to delight everyone.
The funny thing is that Vettel not only managed a podium but Ferrari’s other driver also managed to place himself on it, denying Hamilton any space.
How Lewis reigned in the season?
And it is precisely here, seeped in the heart of this realization that maybe no podium at Mexico was grand enough to fit in Lewis that one realizes the simple key to succeed in the sport.
To make most in the game of Cricket, they say, you’d rather fire as many runs as possible in the first fifteen overs. To win a game in Soccer, if you fire 4-5 goals inside an hour, it leaves your opponent with a mighty task to contend with. Playing catch up then isn’t fun; it’s a nightmare.
Five-time World Champion, Lewis Hamilton didn’t just keep his cool under pressure- for instance, bouncing back strongly at Hungary where Vettel won last year and following his crushing loss to Ferrari at Belgium, he also proved a better driver under inclement weather.
With the same passion or emotion with which one derided Vettel spinning out of the track, going wide in the closing stages at Hockenheimring, a race he should’ve won, one admired Hamilton for keeping his four wheels inside the track, on the tarmac, for that is where glory lies, not off it.
There is some sense in appreciating Hamilton who didn’t celebrate his lucky win at Baku by rubbing it on the face of everyone. His team made sense in suggesting, at the back of Vettel locking up under heavy breaking and Valtteri’s tyre puncture that ‘lady luck was on our side.’
Hamilton was dignified in his win at Spain, a lot cheerful at Japan even as he admitted Ferrari’s superior straight-line speed not resulting in a win was ‘surprising.’ He was more expressive as he sparkled at the Marina Bay Circuit, lending illumination to a well-lit track. Eventually, it could be said, he made Vettel pay the price of huge mistakes, first by failing to secure a win at the German GP, next up by messing races such as the USA.
Bouncing back against odds
That in Austria, around a quarter of a year ago, Vettel passed Hamilton approaching a sharp-right hander was perhaps reflective of the treatment he’d be dully reciprocated by his arch-rival, Hamilton replying superbly by that stellar move at Sochi.
But maybe what underlines the greatness of a man who could be called the titan of the game, a man who seems out on a John Wick-mode of destruction, aligning a very Michael Jackson-like swiftness on the dance floor to a Babe Ruth-like alacrity for accepting challenges is Lewis’ sensational fightback at Silverstone, his home Grand Prix.
He was reviled for calling out Ferrari for ‘interesting tactics.’ For a man he so respects, at least that is what it appears, making a public confession of playing him on PlayStation, Hamilton thought Raikkonen’s coming to blows with him was ‘deliberate.’
But truth be told, strange or impulsive as it may have sounded, he didn’t shy away from returning Raikkonen the compliment for his stellar Monza effort, where his pass on the Iceman in the closing stages was about every bit epic as has been his comeback since the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix defeat to Vettel.
Many can scale greatness. But invincibility, especially in the highest levels of Motor-racing comes to embrace only a few. There’s been Fangio.
There’s been, Senna.
There’s a certain Michael Schumacher.
The man responsible for the Gold at Silver Arrows
And now, it seems, there’s five-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Ferrari couldn’t find an answer. Red Bulls tried, won a few races but stand at some distance on the Constructor’s standings where Merc are delivering the gold.
Does anyone have an answer to the puzzle that’s Lewis Hamilton’s growing superiority, for surely four-time World Champion, the Michelangelo to Hamilton’s Leonardo Da Vinci, the oppressor to Hamilton’s aggressor has no clue?
For now, let’s tip our hat to the finest man on the grid at a time where Vettel’s confidence has been upset, the Iceman’s just discovered a second wind and there’s no dearth of quick men in Max, Ricciardo, and a rising Leclerc.