sport news For a man who has been handed everything, Lewis Hamilton needs to stop feeling ... trends now
Lewis Hamilton is one paranoiac individual. He earns £50million a year and is due to join Ferrari for a lot more next season (perhaps £70m), yet he believes the world is against him.
It may be an element of what motivates him, but it was strange to hear his remarks on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix in which he said there were those ‘talking s***’ about his decision to leave Mercedes for the Scuderia.
He announced the news of his switch in January, a move that caught many people by surprise, though it had been a long-held desire of his and one he had looked into for years, however tentatively previously.
Of course, he is right to seek a new home. Mercedes are struggling to find form and he is bored by the project. One step forward, one back, for them.
He said in Shanghai: ‘I don’t feel like I need my decision vindicated. I know what is right for me and that hasn’t changed from the moment I made the decision.
Lewis Hamilton hit back at those he believes have been critical of his impending move to Ferrari next season
The driver appeared incensed but the press room are not thought to know exactly who he was referring to
Hamilton (pictured in 2023 with Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur) has been inspired in the past by a 'world-against-me' attitude
‘There’s not been a moment that I’ve questioned it and I’m not swayed by other people’s comments. Even today, there are people continuing to talk s***, and it will continue on for the rest of the year. I’ll have to just do what I do.
‘Only you can know what’s right for you and this will be an exciting time for me.’
When pressed on who it was ‘talking s***’, Hamilton said: ‘Just read what’s out there.’
Well, perhaps social media trolls have been slagging him off, but who else? Nobody that I have read. The press conference room, I’m told, was not sure what he was banging on about.
This sense of the world-against-me has acted as inspiration for Hamilton throughout his life, and it reached its apogee when, in 2011, the stewards at Monaco penalised him for erratic driving. He had an unusually bad race that day and he asked, tongue-half-in-cheek, ‘Is it ‘cos I’m black?’ It was an Ali G line, and shouldn’t be taken too literally.
Lewis has had everything. Ron Dennis, then boss of McLaren, sponsored himself to the hilt and turned him into the most prepared debutant driver Formula One has ever known. Indeed, he had the most gleaming equipment from a young age. Other go-karters, as boys, looked on in awe at his lavish equipment.
Ron Dennis (left) was an early champion of the driver's and helped him emerge as a debutant
It has been that way ever since. Yes, he says that he wants to help other non-white competitors reach the stars, which is laudable, but the barrier towards inclusion in motor sport is not determined by the colour of one’s skin, but by financial considerations.
It costs approximately £8m to progress through Formulae Three and Two. Lewis, who remains a brilliant self-made story, had more privileges than most once he was 13 or so, significantly but not uniquely down to his father Anthony’s hard work.
But feeling sorry for himself, or to think he is being s***-talked, no thanks.
The sprint format, defamed by many traditionalists, returns in Shanghai this weekend.
I have, in fact, been open to the possible potential of the sprints on the understanding that the alternative – three sessions of practice – is stupefyingly dull.
The existence of laborious practice sessions may not
