How the wheels fell off the Lewis Hamilton bandwagon

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1205828/How-wheels-fell-Lewis-Hamilton-bandwagon.html

The reigning Formula One champion is having a tough season: he's been accused of lying; he's been saddled with a dud car; he's losing his crown to another Brit - and even his fans are turning against him... Lewis Hamilton tells Cole Moreton about his annus horribilis.


By COLE MORETON




'I've won it and experienced it before; I want to do it again. The dream is to win,' says Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton will not lie down. The photographer wants him to recline on a set of racing wheels, but the driver just won't do it.

'Looks a bit gay,' he says, 'lying down on a load of tyres.'

It's a shock to hear the language of the playground from a Formula One world champion who usually sounds like he's reading from a corporate script, but this brief, unguarded comment reveals something about Hamilton. I'll see it again over the next few days, as I watch him close up at Silverstone, before and during the British Grand Prix. This 24-year-old multimillionaire, tax exile, sporting icon and role model is still, to a surprising extent, a boy.
Physically, he's so slight that even those who work with him don't always notice when he enters the room. I'm deep in conversation with the head of PR for his racing team when someone appears in the doorway of the futuristic, three-storey prefab that is the travelling base for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes.

'Steve?' says a quiet voice, but the PR doesn't look up, so I assume the slender figure, silhouetted by the sunshine outside, is some young intern. 'Steve, can I have a word?'
He looks too slight to withstand the extreme physical punishment of racing. In fact , he'd fit in among the lads who hang around in our local supermarket car park after dark doing 'doughnuts' - those tight, braking circles.
This isn't a good time to meet Lewis Hamilton. He's having a terrible season. His car is a disaster. In a month's time (we're in June) he'll astonish everyone by pulling off an unexpected victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix, but for the moment it seems inconceivable that the champion will win again this year.
'Hello,' he says, offering his hand. And here comes another shock: it's like shaking hands with the Terminator, such is the strength of his cool, hard grip and the feeling of power in the arm behind it. Crikey.
The man from McLaren has told me Hamilton only responds to people who are positive and upbeat. It's going to be difficult, then, to ask the one thing I really want to know: where did it all go wrong?
He's young, good-looking, immensely rich, has a pop-star girlfriend in Nicole Scherzinger of the *****cat Dolls, and does what he loves best for a living. So on the face of it that question is almost as absurd as when it was asked of the champagne-swilling, Miss World-hugging George Best. It's still true, however, that at the moment we meet, Lewis Hamilton is in the midst of an extraordinary fall from grace.
He was unstoppable in 2008, recording a series of thrilling wins to become the first British world champion in more than a decade. He was also the first black person to take the title, and, at 23, the youngest-ever champion.


Now, instead of leading races, he's slipping and sliding around at the back, trying not to lose control of a car that some experts say is so bad it's dangerous. When he did get on the podium, finishing third in the first race of the season in Australia, he was disqualified for 'misleading' the stewards in order to get a rival in trouble.
Here at Silverstone in June, people are saying he hates his car, he's been let down by his team's failure to keep up with changes in the technology, he has fallen out of love with the sport and feels abandoned by his mentor Ron Dennis, who retired as team principal at McLaren before the season started.
Nobody loved him more last year than the fans at Silverstone, where 90,000 turned up to witness a brave victory in the rain. This year, many fans have switched allegiance.

'It's your patriotic duty to back whichever Brit has the best chance of winning,' says Paul Parker, a delivery driver from the Welsh borders. He's carrying a flag emblazoned with the face of Jenson Button.
'It's his turn,' says Parker. 'Anyway, Lewis has lost it. His head's gone.'
Is that true? Back at the McLaren base, Hamilton looks bored as he slurs out a stock answer to a soft opening question.

'I'm having to push harder than ever, but I'm driving as well as ever, really, to try and pull out more than there is possible from this car.'
How does he manage to still go into every race believing, despite the problems, that he can win?
There's a pause.

'Er, what, win?'

Yes, I say. Another pause. He's looking at me now, hard in the eyes, as if trying to judge whether I really am the idiot I seem.

'Oh, I have to be realistic. I've got a car that's almost two seconds off the pace. To win a race is out of the question.'

Lewis turns moodily away from the car that has ruined his 2009 season
Where, then, does he find the strength of character to get in a dangerous car and hurtle around at 200mph, with virtually no prospect of victory?

'Because I'm a winner,' he says, contradicting what he's just said.

'This is the one thing I love - it's my job and I wake up to...'

He taps the table.

'To...' He taps the table again. If he were a multimillion-pound racing car, I'd call this a systems malfunction. 'I've won it and experienced it before; I want to do it again. The dream is to win.'
Hasn't he fallen out of love with racing?

'Nope.' I might have done by now, I say, if I had a world of luxury and relaxation waiting for me.
'Yeah, but I'm 24 years old. It's when you get on - 40, 50, 60 years old - that you start to think, "I've got nothing left in me."' He's grinning at me, the clapped-out geezer daring to question the champion. 'I'm at the beginning of my life. I've got many, many years left in me.'
Hamilton sounds like someone for whom the pressure is now off. Everyone knows his car is rubbish, so anything he achieves will be heroic.
'When you arrive here and you're leading, the first slip-up can lose you the championship. It's a big pressure. I don't have that right now. If I can get a point I'll be happy. It's a very different perspective.'


How does he feel about the way so many fans have switched allegiance?
'It doesn't bother me. It's the way the world works. People love winners. Some people love to support the team that's winning, like in football.'
British F1 followers reserve their fiercest love for drivers they feel are like them. Lewis Hamilton was a mixed-race boy from Stevenage. His success seemed to prove that anyone could make it in this most elitist of sports. That was the story the fans were sold. Does he understand, then, that some feel let down by the speed with which he seemed to become just another arrogant, over-rich playboy driver?
'Well, ah, the thing is that it's what they read that makes them think that,' he says. 'It's like people say I've got a boat - I've never thought of buying a boat. I've rented a boat.'
He has a small apartment, he says. That will be the one in Switzerland, where he's a tax exile.

'I don't spend money. I don't waste money. I have, on occasions, taken my girlfriend on a trip somewhere, and I can afford a better trip than some other people, but I don't live an extravagant lifestyle.'
He's clearly wondering why he's defending himself. The fans don't seem to mind Nicole. No, it was moving to Switzerland to escape British taxes that really cheesed people off.
'The thing is,' says Hamilton, 'if they were in my position they would do the same thing. If you like to go to the cinema but you can't without being bombarded by a load of people, and you can't live a normal life, then you have to take the right precautions to be able to do that. I live a normal life where I am and I'm happy.'
What was the last film he saw?

'Oh, it was ages ago. Erm. Slumdog Millionaire.'

His girlfriend sings the theme tune - so this probably wasn't at his local multiplex.
And lying to the stewards in Australia, even under team orders, dented his image.

'All I can say is, no one's perfect. I am a human being. I'm not a... you race to be a superstar, and you're looked at as a god or something silly. I'm not. I've got no superpowers, I'm a normal human being who's made it from nowhere. And I've got to somewhere. It just so happens that when I make a mistake, it's all over the tabloids.'
Fair enough, you might think, very humble, but he can't leave it at that...
'When you make a mistake, it's like, no one cares.'

Ouch. So he feels sorry for himself?

'Every sportsman, every film actor, every great person that's doing well and achieving something, it's like, hype, hype, hype, and as soon as they make one slip-up, it's "Wow".' He shakes his head, irritably. 'It's one slip-up.'
I'm not sure Ron Dennis would have let him get away with whining like this. Have they fallen out?
'The relationship I've had with Ron is more of a family one, more of a stepfather kind of thing. It's a very strong relationship. We still talk, still get on very well. I'm sad he's not in the paddock here. I miss him. I told him I miss him and he knows that.'

And that's all he wants to say on that subject. Our time is up. He smiles with relief, job done, and he gives a quick thumbs-up.
Lewis with his girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, lead singer of the *****cat Dolls, after winning the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix on July 26, 2009 in Budapest, Hungary
Friday morning in the pits, and the engineers aren't happy. The car keeps losing its grip on the track on high-speed corners. Half an hour later, Hamilton gives the fans in the grandstands a wave on his warm-up lap. Then his nightmares begin again: the car is still losing grip all the time. He's 15th.
Walking between the bold red trailers of Ferrari, Hamilton's father and his lover arrive at the pits. They enter the garage just as Hamilton drives in and Nicole decides to gee him up. She bends over the car, holds his hand in the cockpit and puts her face close to his visor, saying something nobody can hear. Whatever she has just said, it works. Hamilton records his two fastest laps of the day immediately after her pep talk, rising to fifth in the table... but that's it. He is not even in the car for the last ten minutes of the session.

'I think she distracted him slightly,' says an engineer, wrily,
On Saturday, just as McLaren are preparing for his 'flying lap', a crash ends the session. Hamilton will start in 19th place. Somebody asks if his race is over.

Yep,' he says grimly. 'Definitely.'
The McLaren engineers change the set-up of the car for the race on Sunday afternoon, but it doesn't work.

'Get me in early,' pleads Hamilton over the intercom, begging for a change of tyres to give him more grip but his boss says no. He finishes 16th.
The commentators talk as if his confidence is shattered, but he's not like that in person. He's more like someone who knows he has time on his side and believes in his ability to rise again. That's the confidence of youth and that (along with a revamped car) is exactly what will get him through this worst period of his career and on to a staggering win in Hungary in a month's time.
You can see it when the Silverstone race is over. The fans at Club Corner watch as he veers towards them, onto the hard shoulder. His tyres squeal and smoke comes from his car. He's doing doughnuts, like a lad in a car park. He's way past caring now. He's pleasing his fans, and himself. That's why not all of them will desert him and it's why he will win again: underneath it all, he's just a boy racer

 

I thank you! I aim to please.