F1 2017 season preview: Ten years at the top - but does Lewis Hamilton still have the hunger?
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Updated 22/03/2017 at 12:22 GMT
It is now a full decade since Lewis Hamilton made his Formula One debut, and David Coulthard says he wouldn't be surprised if he walked away in 2017. But Tom Adams looks at how the Mercedes star is still pushing boundaries, and should be feared, maybe more than ever.
Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton during the launch
Image credit: Reuters
It was obvious from day one. The words of McLaren boss Ron Dennis, spoken a few months before Hamilton came third in his first race in Australia back in 2007, were prophetic: I am distinctly unimpressed with the majority of drivers currently involved in Formula One. I feel Lewis is well equipped to deal with these drivers who fall into that category.”
He certainly was. Hamilton lost out on the title in the final race of the season and was only beaten by one point by Kimi Raikkonen. It immediately established him as a leading light in F1. The youngest ever driver to come second in the championship, Hamilton set fire to the sport in that stunning debut season, reconfiguring a stale grid around a character whose impact on his sport would be profound.
Ten seasons and three world titles later, Hamilton is again favourite to finish the 2017 season at the top of the pile. Nico Rosberg dethroned him last season, even if Hamilton won more races in the Mercedes, but the German’s retirement from the sport opens up a potential new chapter of Hamilton dominance.
The 2017 season is one of fundamental change in F1, with Bernie Ecclestone no longer in charge following the takeover by Liberty Media, but Hamilton is still the dominant figure in the paddock, and also at Mercedes, where Valtteri Bottas is very much a junior partner.
But how long can Hamilton’s dominance extend into the distance, and could the end be closer than we think?
Will Hamilton win his fourth world title?
Fears for the future
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Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One driver Britain's Lewis Hamilton poses by the new 2017 season Mercedes W08 EQ Power+ Formula One car
Image credit: AFP
“I plan to be here for another 10 years at least,” Hamilton told the crowd at Mercedes’ end-of-season event in Stuttgart in December. Rosberg had already shocked the sport by announcing he would be withdrawing from F1 after finally winning a world title but thoughts of following his old karting sparring partner and quitting at the top seemed far from Hamilton’s mind.
But not everyone shares the 32-year-old’s conviction, publicly expressed at least, that he can reign for another decade. David Coulthard even says he fears Hamilton could walk away from the sport during the 2017 season, questioning the three-time champion’s ongoing engagement with the sport.
There are moments when you see his pure enjoyment, the little boy in the man if you like. As long as that light is getting switched on from time to time he’ll continue to do it. But he has to answer the same questions over and over and some days you can see him glaze over and just go through the process. You can fool others but not yourself. It wouldn’t take much for him to say ‘F*** it, I’m off.’ That could be at the end of the year, it could be during the season. It could be sooner than we all want… I would be surprised if he’s still doing it beyond 35 because he started so young. Like anything in life, to keep something fresh and exciting over a ten-to-20 year period is tough. Every sportsman has his peak and if he doesn’t stop there will be a decline at some point.
Has Hamilton’s focus been affected by competing interests? Does he still have the fire in his belly required to perform at an elite level? And what could the coming season bring?
Smoothing things over
The evidence from the last race of 2016 was very much that Hamilton is still as fierce a competitor as he always was. Contravening team orders and risking a fine or even a suspension in the process, Hamilton, leading the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix but needing Rosberg to finish fourth or lower, backed up his rival, who was second, in an attempt to give Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen a chance to overtake.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was unimpressed. “Undermining a structure in public means you are putting yourself before the team,” he said. “It is very simple. Anarchy does not work in any team and in any company.”
But the team backed down and acknowledged Hamilton’s position. With Rosberg out the door and Bottas now in place, the murmurings from within Mercedes have been rather more harmonious approaching the new season. As Hamilton said recently:
I’m feeling in a positive place with the team. We talked about a lot of stuff over the winter. I was able to get some things off my chest and now we are communicating better than ever and continuing to grow together.
Victory through harmony
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Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, Executive Director Toto Wolff and Valtteri Bottas pose during the launch
Image credit: Reuters
The feeling that all is right in Hamilton’s world extends to the dynamic between the two Mercedes drivers. Rifts with team-mates have been a constant thread in Hamilton’s career. It started when the young upstart’s extreme talent rubbed Fernando Alonso up the wrong way at McLaren 10 years ago and reached an apex in the civil war which erupted between Hamilton as Rosberg as they jousted for the title between 2014 and 2016. During last season they collided three times in five races in the summer.
Hamilton even had his moments with fellow Brit Jenson Button at McLaren, when he was forced into an embarrassing apology after claiming his team-mate had unfollowed him on Twitter – when in fact he had never followed him in the first place.
But Alonso and Button were both former champions, and Rosberg had proven himself a winner of races, and would win the title in 2016. Bottas is a different prospect altogether – and Hamilton clearly feels the pair have already found the right alchemy heading into the new season.
Can Bottas out-score Hamilton this season?
“What I so far like about working with Valtteri is that it is all to do with the track - what we do on the circuit - and not outside,” Hamilton said at the start of the month. “There are no games - there is complete transparency. I like that.
I feel we already have a better working relationship than I ever had with any team-mate I had before.
If his rivals were hoping Hamilton, and Mercedes, would get derailed by internecine conflicts, they may be disappointed. Not that it ever proved a barrier to success when the Rosberg rift was at its widest. The installation of Bottas also makes Hamilton the undisputed king of the team.
“I’m committed, hopefully they’re committed to me,” said Hamilton recently: “I’m now their only world champion, so hopefully they respect and appreciate that and the commitment that I’ll put into next year.”
The distractions
Coulthard is not the only person to have suggested that Hamilton’s eye may have wandered away from F1 – even if his stunning record of achievement over the last few years hardly paints a picture of a man whose focus has gone.
His Snapchat antics prior to last year’s Japanese Grand Prix drew criticism, when he applied comedy filters to other drivers in the press conference and joked around with his phone.
It didn’t exactly send a message of total engagement with the event, but Hamilton has successfully lobbied for F1 to relax its social media policies, and not just so he can muck about with a pair of digital bunny ears. As he said in February:
If you look at football, social media is so much greater, they utilise social media a lot better in football, in the NBA, in the NFL. In F1 every time, for example, I would have posted a picture or a video, I would have got a warning from the FIA, or notice telling you to take it down. This year I am hoping that they will change that rule, and allow social media for all of us, because social media is obviously an incredible medium for the world to communicate with. It is a super easy free tool to grow for the sport, for us to use, to share it, to engage with other people.
Indeed the rules have now been changed – drivers and teams can now post short-form video on social channels - and no one has played a bigger role than Hamilton in opening F1 up to a new audience.
His celebrity lifestyle and passion for music continue to be dominant threads in his life - he is a cultural figure, not just a sporting one - but hobbies remain hobbies. As he said in 2016: "Let me say it bluntly: this here - F1 - is what I know how to do best. Yes there are also other things that I do really well, but nothing compares to that. I know that and accept it."
The sweet spot – and the threat
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Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton uses his mobile phone during the launch
Image credit: AFP
It has been a career in three chapters for Lewis Hamilton. The first two seasons saw his stunning emergence as he narrowly missed out on the title in 2007 and then took it in dramatic circumstances in 2008. The next season, Hamilton’s wilderness years began when McLaren and the rest of the pack were left in the slipstream of Brawn GP’s revolutionary diffusers as Button won the title; Red Bull then assumed control with Sebastian Vettel winning the next four championships.
But the move to Mercedes made Hamilton a leading force one more, with two titles and a second place in his past three years. With Rosberg gone, the field would seem to be clear for Hamilton to reassert his supremacy.
| Year | Wins | Poles | Final position |
| 2007 | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| 2008 | 5 | 7 | 1 |
| 2009 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| 2010 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| 2011 | 3 | 1 | 5 |
| 2012 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
| 2013 | 1 | 5 | 4 |
| 2014 | 11 | 7 | 1 |
| 2015 | 10 | 11 | 1 |
| 2016 | 10 | 12 | 2 |
And yet, it may not be quite as easy as all that. Hamilton is just one title off Vettel and Alain Prost, having drawn level with his hero Ayrton Senna on three, but the signs heading into the 2017 season are that Mercedes may have a fight on their hands, even if they have won 51 of the past 59 races.
Ferrari’s SF70H car has been seriously quick in testing, to the extent that Hamilton is trying to make the case that the Italian manufacturer should be considered the leading candidates for the title:
Ferrari must be the favourites. We can't take our eyes off them because they have been doing such a great job at the moment. Red Bull look like they are quite good as well. We'll see over the next days and, most importantly, over the next weeks, but it's going to be close in the first race, that's for sure. Just on times it looks like Ferrari might be quickest, and maybe we're very close with the Red Bull behind.
But with Hamilton at the helm – refreshed and renewed by a change of partner, and targeting yet more history - Mercedes start the year as the team to beat. Despite Coulthard's alarmist claims, Hamilton looks as hungry as ever to enforce his will on the sport once more.
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