Roebuck: Hamilton will win again then walk away

Lewis Hamilton can be charming, as we know, and he can also be churlish.

After qualifying poorly at Monaco in 2017, his mood was not good when he was asked about Fernando Alonso's Indianapolis 500 bid the following day. If Alonso could qualify fifth in his first venture into a wholly new environment, Hamilton suggested, it didn't say much for the level of competition.

Not surprisingly, that didn't sit well with the Indycar regulars, and Tony Kanaan's response raised many a smile at the Brickyard that afternoon: "I'm really not too interested in the opinion of someone who finished second in a two-car championship..."

The year before Hamilton had indeed been runner-up to Nico Rosberg, the Mercedes pair between them winning all but two of the 21 races.

To date, though, that was the only season of the hybrid era in which Lewis came up short. Five years into it, four world championships have been added to the one scored with McLaren back in 2008.

Waspish as Kanaan's remark may have been, in describing contemporary Formula 1 as a two-car championship he was on the mark.

If Ferrari and Red Bull have troubled Mercedes once in a while, fundamentally since the arrival of the hybrids one marque has held a steel grip on grand prix racing.

Protracted periods of domination have been very much the way of it in the 21st century. First it was Ferrari with Michael Schumacher, then Red Bull with Sebastian Vettel, and most recently Mercedes with Hamilton. Since the beginning of 2014, Lewis has won more than half the races.

"Remembering the Red Bull era, when Seb won his four titles," commented Martin Brundle, "Lewis was quite dismissive of him, saying, well, he had the best car - which is a bit of a laugh when you think what he's had in the last five years! If Mercedes carry on like this, in a couple of years we could be looking at Lewis's seventh championship - and perhaps his 100th victory..."

The odds may be long, but don't bet against it. If on occasion last year Ferrari had a quicker car, no team can match the stamina of Mercedes, and as well as that Hamilton's season was unquestionably his best, not least because for the first time in his career he managed to shed those mysterious 'off' weekends.

Assuredly all the ingredients were in place. Week in, week out, a Mercedes is the thing to have, and operationally the team is unapproached. Throw in that Valtteri Bottas - rarely a threat to Hamilton, yet quick enough, as Toto Wolff put it, to be an effective 'wing man' - is a dream team-mate, and you can say that, with a new, crazily lucrative contract in his pocket, all of Lewis's stars were aligned in 2018.

Looking at the exotic superstar of today, it is salutary now to remember the smiling kid who burst on the scene with McLaren in 2007, the electrifying rookie lucky enough to be starting his F1 career with the best car, forever repeating the mantra that he was 'living the dream'.


Still living in England, being paid a relative pittance, wearing a yellow helmet in homage to his hero Ayrton Senna (whose achievements he has now eclipsed), racing a grand prix car was all he wanted to do.

Hamilton's has been very much a career of two halves. When Ross Brawn convinced him in 2012 that the Mercedes engine was going to dominate the forthcoming hybrid era, Hamilton's six seasons with McLaren had yielded one fortunate championship and 22 wins - impressive statistics, certainly, but well short of what his freakish talent had initially promised.

As Martin Whitmarsh has said, Lewis was anything but easy to manage in those years: "Underneath it all I liked him, but he could be maddeningly frustrating to work with. Quite often he came off the rails, and that affected his performance in a lot of races."

Back then Hamilton overtly wore his heart on his sleeve, a trait which some found appealing, others less so. This was especially apparent during his on-off relationship with Nicole Scherzinger, but once that ended Lewis's persona began to change, and these days he has about him an iron-clad quality.

As Brundle says: "He's the one guy I never try to talk to on my grid walk - I don't need to be blanked, thank you!"

Undoubtedly McLaren people were indulgent of Hamilton during his years with the team - from childhood he had been 'in-house', after all - but Mercedes folk have been even more so, reasoning that if Lewis were allowed to lead what is an unconventional life for an F1 driver, his performances would be all the better for it.

Although one cannot imagine a man like Ron Dennis cutting him such slack, the results suggest they are right. Come to that, in the old days - when testing was a ceaseless activity - it would have been impossible for him to hotfoot it to California or wherever until the day before practice
 for the next race. Perhaps Alain Prost has a point when he says today's drivers have it easy.

Whatever, so long as he maintains his Olympian fitness, Hamilton has pretty much free rein to live as he wishes. Some have pointed out that, for all his numberless celebrity acquaintances, he appears to have few close friends in or out of the paddock, and perhaps this is by choice, strengthening his impervious image.

Like Nigel Mansell, Lewis is very much a 'Marmite' driver, engendering strong feelings - for and against - among fans across the world, and of course the tattoos and gold bling have their part to play in this, just as Jackie Stewart's long hair did half a century ago: in fundamentals, the world doesn't change.

These days Hamilton's interests - chiefly fashion and music - extend far beyond motor racing, and many believe that when he quits, probably in a couple of years, it will be without a backward glance.