Many fans, pundits, competitors, and racing teams in formula one have long come to the conclusion that Lewis Hamilton is the greatest driver ever to get behind the wheel of a formula one car. Listen to Nikki Lauda. Lewis Hamilton is the greatest F1 driver ever: Niki Lauda
Now he has the numbers to prove it: most wins, most podiums, most World Championships. The numbers he does not have (most fastest laps) are sure to become his should he decide to continue. Some obscure but key numbers show Lewis Hamilton's dominance of his era and in fact, any era.
Drivers are considered to be entered into a race if they attempt to compete in at least one official practice session with the intent of entering the race. These drivers are noted on the entry list for that race. A driver is considered to have started a race if they line up on the grid or at the pitlane exit for the start of the race. If a race is stopped and restarted, participation in any portion of the race is counted, but only if that portion was in any way counted towards the final classification (e.g., most races stopped before the end of the leader's second lap had the first part declared null and void in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the first part did count if it was run for more than one complete lap before the race was stopped).
Hamilton has the largest number of races entered and races started of any active driver at 264. This also happens to be the most consecutive starts by any F1 driver since the value has been measured. That consistency is great. And as the sole holder, Hamilton has the base to be the greatest. Follow that with achievement and there can be no argument.
His greatness could be seen from his very first F1 race. Whether he would become the best ever was a question of time and happenstance. With the wrapping up of his 7th World Championship on Sunday November 15, 2020, in this weirdest of years, that time has come.
There have been numerous mis-steps along the way, but he has never stopped moving, maturing, and learning; separating from his father, leaving McLaren for Mercedes, negotiating his own contracts. He was Bold in that he took the risks, Brave in that he bore the pain, and embodied Struggle, Suffer, Try. If you have the talent and that attitude, then you can become the GOAT.
It is not possible to judge an athlete outside their time. People really can only be assessed in the time in which they lived. In football there is great debate about the GOAT; the internet generation believes it is a battle between Messi and Ronaldo, Pep Guardiola seems convinced it is Messi, many including my sons say Ronaldo, and for anyone over 60 it is Pele. I am of that age to have seen (on television) all play. Pele technically and athletically is far superior to anyone I have watched play, and he also played in an era where defenders deliberately set out to break bones.
For me, the GOAT is Diego Maradona. What differentiates him from the top contenders including Cryuff (according to Beckenbauer “if Ronaldo is 100 million then Cryuff would have been a billion”) and the Kaiser himself? With one foot, dependent on the mood of God for his aerial prowess, he led Argentina to two World Cup finals, both against Germany, in 1986 & 1990. The German teams on both occasions were full of names that spring readily to mind: Rummenigge, Voller, Matthaeus, Littbarski, Augenthaler, Brigel, Klinsmann, Riedle. Can you remember anyone besides Maradona from the Argentinian side?
Truth is, he single footedly willed an average team to the top, as he did with Napoli in Italy. Few sportsmen have, by their sheer will, been so dominant. Another is Michael Jordan of the NBA, another shoo-in for GOAT despite many experts finding ever increasing technical definitions to show why LeBron must in fact be superior.
In Diego is a major clue as to Hamilton’s problem. Diego’s politics are well known; he openly cavorts with communists. Hamilton has been very vocal in Black Lives Matter, taking the knee and is known to be anti-Trump. Not only is it difficult for people to separate people’s use of their talents and ability in specific activities from their views or actions in other areas, the growing trend is to judge people's legitimate accomplishments by their unrelated failures, real or imagined, hence some have difficulty listening to Michael Jackson and I know of persons who no longer read Harry Potter.
Should this trend continue, we will all soon resemble the mediocrity which characterises present day elites.
An example to follow is Nikki Lauda, the formula one great. A man unafraid to see things as they are and say it. In his analysis of Hamilton he compared him to the greats: Fangio, Moss, Stewart, Clark, Prost, Senna, and Schumacher–notably missing was Lauda himself. Now you may think that this was due to modesty, but you would be mistaken. Nikki Lauda did not do modesty nor hubris; he maintained himself firmly in reality. In his mind, despite three World Championships and his return from a horrendous crash which would have ended the career of most drivers, he did not belong in the conversation. He was sure that there could only be one answer to the Question.
I once had lunch with Nikki Lauda in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. He had come over on the first flight of Lauda Air into Montego Bay and stayed a few days at the San Souci. I cannot say verbatim what transpired, but I left that lunch feeling wholly inadequate. His was an approach to life that was uncompromising, controlled, rooted in reality, and the embodiment of Struggle, Suffer, Try. That lunch, under an hour, has had a profound effect on me. It has shaped my life.
In Lewis Hamilton Nikki Lauda saw himself but better. Watch how Hamilton drives: his management of risk, his doing of only what is necessary in the moment, his management of his car, his tires, his team. This is Lauda; working hard to control all that he could from an age where the dangers were very high so that he had the space to deal with the unexpected.
Lewis Hamilton has dominated his sport far more comprehensively than Usain Bolt has dominated sprinting. Who would raise their voice against Usain Bolt being the GOAT? I first came across F1 in the early 1970’s while watching the sports newscast on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation in Kingston, Jamaica. I was a student of Calabar High School, 61 Red Hills Road. There was a report on an upcoming F1 race complete with video. The cars were being checked for compliance to regulations, and to my amazement, the measurements were being taken with a micrometer screw gauge; an instrument with which I had only recently become familiar and knew to be of extreme accuracy. The next day at school I had an excited conversation with friends as to how precise these cars must be! To discover that sport could have such a high level of science was a revelation. This is the world of Lewis Hamilton; seemingly not the natural place for a person of colour to be, but yet, here he is.
So judge the man on his sport; we are witnessing something very special.
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