Close Confidante Reveals Lewis Hamilton’s Strange Secret Weapon Which Max Verstappen Lacks: “Better at Losing…”

In recent years, F1 has seen how quickly things can change. Until the final lap of the last race in Abu Dhabi in 2021, Lewis Hamilton was on the hunt for the championship. Come next year and he could not register a single win for an entire season for the first time in his entire F1 career. However, the defeats and lows motivate him to do better and come back stronger. His trusted aide recently revealed the quality that helps him handle defeats better than any other driver on the grid.

After what happened in the season finale in 2021, Mercedes and Hamilton were expected to come out all guns blazing in 2022. However, in reality, things turned out to be rather different. The Silver Arrows were left adapting to the new regulations while rivals Red Bull and Max Verstappen ran away with both championships. Despite all of that, the Briton kept a stable approach to his conduct. That does not necessarily mean that he is happy with the way things are going.

“It just doesn’t work that way,” Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin said in an interview with BBC. “But he loses very well if you want someone to come back and win the next race.” [Translated using Google]

“He’s actually better at losing than most I’ve seen,” he added. “That’s because of how diligently he goes through his work to understand what he needs to get better where he missed the opportunities. He doesn’t enjoy it, but it’s about the result at the next race, not whether he laughs or gives a nice interview.'”

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2022 was a testing year for Hamilton, not just in terms of results, but physically as well. The porpoising issue left him in severe back pain, the only memory he carried forward.

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While Mercedes remained non-competitive almost throughout the season, the final few races brought a sigh of relief. The final changes brought the best out of the car and a race win finally came to Brazil courtesy of George Russell. Giving an update on this year’s challenger, Toto Wolff made some tall promises.

Speaking with Planet F1 last month, he said, “It’s full of surprises. The last time I saw it I thought ‘oh this looks the same [as the W13]’ but here’s hoping it’s not the same.”

“I’m pretty much like you, I go into the wind tunnel and it looks like this year’s car but they say to me it’s very different underneath.”

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Despite it being a failed experiment, seems like the Brackley-based team will go ahead with the ‘zero-pods’ design. Will they be able to make the required tweaks though? We shall find out soon as they prepare to launch the car on February 15.