In this article, we are going to see Lewis Hamilton's secret of success in accomplishing 7 Formula 1 world championships. Though, Formula 1 is a complex sport that takes into account the driver's skill, the team's strength and funds, luck. There have been many skilled drivers, but to win championships consistently, it takes a special skill. He has consistently won the crucial moments. Let us try to examine his prolonged championship success from the view of how he managed to get 'Good results on bad days, and great results on good days '.
Lewis Hamilton currently holds the highest number of Formula 1 (F1) world championships alongside Michael Schumacher with a tally of 7, by winning the championships in 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. And he is still very much in the fray for one more in this season. Those following the sport closely, might know that he switched to Mercedes from Mclaren in 2013 and ever since the turbo-hybrid engine era started in 2014, the Mercedes has been by far the dominant team, except for 2017, 2018 and this year where they have equal competition from other constructors namely Ferrari(2017, 2018) and Red Bull(2021) respectively. But in this article we are not going to go into the technical details of the sport, the points mentioned above are just to give an idea that he belongs to a team that has been dominant for 8 years. We are going to see what transpired in the close competition years, specifically 2018 since I looked into that season closely as a supporter of Ferrari.
In 2018, the first 2 races were won by Sebastian Vettel from Ferrari held in Australia and Bahrain respectively. And the 3rd race was won by another constructor (Red bull), other than the top two, Ferrari and Mercedes. Let us quickly see the points system in F1.
1st - 25 6th - 8
2nd - 18 7th - 6
3rd - 15 8th - 4
4th -12 9th - 2
5th - 10 10th - 1
And each constructor or team would have 2 drivers.
Let us now see into the focal point of the article on how Lewis manages to win the championships by getting "Good results on bad days and great results on good days".
In the 4th round at Azerbaijan in the 2018 season, with some laps to go in the race for the finish, after a restart, when the cars are closer, Valtteri Bottas, who is the teammate of Lewis at Mercedes was leading the race, with Lewis's close competitor Sebastian from Ferrari was at 2nd place in the race and he was the leading the championship a bit comfortably, after the first 3 races. At the restart, Sebastian made an aggressive move at turn 1 which is the instinct of any race driver after the restart to overtake Valtteri to get to the lead, but he locked up his tyres which happens occasionally when braking at very high speeds into the corner, this put him at 4th position, and Hamilton moved to 2nd. With few laps for the finish, Valtteri got a puncture and was out of the race. Now suddenly, Lewis was in the lead and won the race comfortably with Sebastian in P4. Now we can see that, in a matter of few laps by consistent and getting some lucky breaks, Lewis gained 10 points in addition and contrastingly, Sebastian had to miss out on 13 points. So essentially on a day when Seb could have walked away with an additional lead of 7 points, ended up giving 13 points to Lewis.
Instance 2, at the Great Britain Grand Prix which was held some rounds after Azerbaijan, here Lewis had a collision in earlier stages of the race which had pushed him to the back of the field at 20th position. But after a tremendous recovery drive, he finished at 2nd place. Though Mercedes is a dominant car it takes some effort and skill to come back to 2nd place, a 4th or 5th place would be an easy recovery. Though Seb managed to win the race, Lewis managed to ensure that he had given only 7 point deficit away to Seb out of this. This is how he managed to get a good result on a bad day, After this race, the standing was Seb at 171 points leading the championship and Lewis at 2nd with 163 points.
The next race which many might feel was the tremendous turning point of the 2018 season in Germany. Seb was dominating the proceedings throughout the weekend. Lewis had to start the race at 15th position due to a hydraulic issue during qualifying. But what happened in the race was quite interesting. Seb was comfortably leading the race, with Lewis at 4th or 5th maybe. Suddenly, there were spots of rain at a few places around the track, otherwise, the track was largely dry. So the drivers had to continue on dry tyres. And Seb had picked one of the very few rare wet spots on the corners, slipped and crashed out of the race. After some laps, Lewis was suddenly leading the grand Prix. With team coordination, he won the race on a day when ideally the championship standings could have been Seb with 196 points and Lewis with 175 points. But what happened, in reality, was Lewis got the lead of the championship with 188 points and Seb was at 171 points. So on a day when Seb could have been leading the championship by 21 points, contrarily he was trailing by 17 points. So again, Lewis got a good result on a bad day. And luck was laughing at him that Seb didn't manage to get a single point that day.
After this race, by perfect team coordination, strategies and favourable Lewis was getting great results on his good days, by winning most of the remaining races. Given this Seb and Ferrari were trying too desperately and hence gave away some key moments in the following 10 races, except managing to win only 1. So, the lead was consistently expanding and Lewis won the championship by a margin of 88 points comfortably. But, essentially I feel the above 3 were some of the key moments of the season, on which Lewis ensured that he had put a stop-loss to minimise his losses during bad starts and maximised his profits when he got an opportunity. This paves way for us to think about one more proverb, 'Always stay in the game'.
Just as an additional note, the points mentioned above are only indicative based on some moments and not to be considered as a comparison of the drivers, as Seb had also dominated for 4 seasons when he had the best car.
In the ongoing season, of the completed races, this trait of Lewis is persisting mostly by limiting the losses on bad days and maximising profits on good days against his current competitor Max Verstappen from Red Bull.
To conclude, this article tries to illustrate the need for an emotional intelligence trait of being cautiously optimistic and staying in the game by preventing losses and maximising the gains.
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