The one thing that keeps Hamilton in love with F1

With six world championships, 83 victories and 87 pole positions under his belt, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, you could forgive Lewis Hamilton if he had started to lose a bit of motivation in Formula 1.

But his never-give-up attitude, the pain that comes from losing, and his incredible work ethic have been just as evident in F1 this year as they were when he burst onto the grand prix scene for that remarkable 2007 rookie campaign.

To understand what drives that continued passion is to look beyond the materialism of what he has achieved; it's not records that push him on and it's certainly not the next pay cheque. In fact, it's something that he cannot find anywhere else in life: the pure joy of racing.

"The thing is I never got into it for money," says Hamilton as he speaks to a select few journalists about his title-winning campaign. "Of course it's great that that piles up, no problem! That's a bonus - as long as those things don't become the lead factor of what I do.

"The core of what I do is that I love racing, I love the challenge. I love arriving knowing I've got these incredibly talented youngsters who are trying to beat me and outperform me and outsmart me. I love that battle every single year.

"And I'm working with these guys [at Mercedes] who are so much smarter than me and they make me feel smarter when I'm challenging them and proving them wrong so many times - it's unreal!

"It happens a lot. I say to 'Shov' [Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin] and he will say, 'No, the numbers say this', and I'll say, 'It's this and this and this.' And he'll say, 'Oh, you're right!' It feels so good. There are a lot of things like that."

One of the factors that keeps Hamilton motivated is the ever-deeper level of detail he needs to dig into to find car performance. In this era of mass data, and forensic analysis of tyre performance, drivers have never had to be more up to speed on vehicle dynamics and car understanding than they are now.

Having the right team of engineers is an important part of a driver's armoury, especially if they can bounce off each other. It's no different for Hamilton, which is why he was slightly unsettled earlier this year when his former performance engineer Riccardo Musconi was promoted to become Valtteri Bottas's new race engineer.

Hamilton admits the passage of time has changed the way he deals with some aspects of F1, especially when it comes to losing

"It really makes it even harder because of the relationship you build with an engineer," he says about that change. "I've got a great relationship with 'Bono' [his race engineer Peter Bonnington] and all my engineers, and each year I sit down with them and ask, 'What can I do more for you for you to give me more?'

"So we're always working on that relationship, that rapport. We know each other so well. I go in a meeting with them at the factory and those guys can sit in meetings for hours and stay focused. I have a window of, say, 23 minutes or something like that. As soon as I get there it's all going over my head. They know.

"So I say, 'Look I gotta get up, go for a pee, have a coffee or something and I can come back.' And they get another 23 minutes. But yeah, it's just understanding those characteristics.

"Ricki [Musconi] is a very talented engineer and naturally he wants to progress; no-one wants to stay in the same position. And being lead engineer has got to be a great goal for an engineer. But we had learned so much, and working together I'd pulled things out of him that perhaps he didn't realise he would have, or maybe it would've taken longer to have done and vice versa.

"So then, when he goes over to the other side, without doubt he'd have been saying, 'Valtteri, why weren't you doing these things? Lewis does this, why are you not doing that?'.

"Everything's now pretty much identical to everything I do. This year it has made it even more challenging because I'm thinking, 'OK, how do I twist it? How do I change these small things now that they're doing the same, without losing performance?'

"Because they're already really good, all the settings and everything and my philosophy were all working perfectly. But now I've got to refine it and take a step up. When it's already close to 100%, taking that 1%, the gap closes. So bringing in a new ace is so hard to find."

It's finding these small areas to exploit, and then using them to deliver an advantage on track, that really motivates Hamilton. But he does admit that the passage of time has changed some of the ways he deals with F1, especially when it comes to losing. Sure, when that happens he may be deeply disappointed on Sunday nights, but he has learned to quickly put those lows behind him.

"I remember, like, 2007 and '08, it [the disappointment of defeat] probably lasted much longer than that," he recalls. "In those times, I couldn't leave my hotel room for three days.

"Through my young days in karting, I was so hard on myself. And in my mind that's just how I deal with things. And people couldn't understand it: 'You finished second, or finished third or fifth' or whatever it may be. And they couldn't understand the turmoil that I would drop into, a really, really dark place, and I couldn't get myself out of it. And that applied to a lot of things in my life.

"As I've grown older I've just understood how to stay centred, get myself out of these dark holes, and I'm less... even in the worst cases, they're not really that dark. That's just growth. There was no quick, short route to doing it.

For some the step into retirement is hard to accept, but Hamilton has at least built a life outside F1 that has given him a glimpse of the different challenges that could await him

"Maybe for you guys, maybe you have the dark; maybe you've not had that dark moment but maybe you learned it a lot earlier. For me, that particular thing happened a lot later. But it still sucks to lose."

Maturity has also brought Hamilton a better understanding of how to balance his life away from F1, as he juggles being able to switch off and knowing exactly when he needs to get back into work mode.

Asked if there are any areas in which he feels he is weaker than before, or whether it's become harder to hit his peaks, he replies: "I don't think there are any weaker areas. You could say if you focused on one area more, another area suffers.

"I could say, for example, I could be physically greater. But there's a certain demand in F1. I don't need to be able to run five marathons in a week. And I would say just the energy load - there's a lot, I have to take a lot of weight.

"I don't go to the races and just go home, and spend all week just training, which would be so much easier. I have so many commitments and I would say that in many areas that's a strength.

"But if I'm not careful that can easily tip over and be a weakness. I'm constantly monitoring that. I run a tight ship with Marc [Hynes] and my guys. I don't plan to be the easiest person to work with. I tell you how it is. And if I ever feel that I need to back away, I've got people around me who [understand that]."

After 12 years in F1, though, it's fair to say Hamilton is nearer the end of his career than the beginning. And however much he loves the racing, thrives on the challenge and relishes proving people wrong, there will come a day where he will have to call time on what he does.

For some the step into retirement is hard to accept, but for Hamilton he has at least built up a life outside F1 that has given him a glimpse of the different challenges that could await him.

"I don't fear it," he says about retirement. "I think naturally for athletes, it has to be the saddest day. It's going to be a sad day, to hang up and stop doing something you've loved your whole life and as long as you can remember. But that's why I have all these other things in place that I can fall back on. The fashion side for example - I've found another business that I can do for a long time if successful.

"Currently that's going really, really well but I don't know how long it will go on. And there are a lot of different things I can be interested in. I know my life is not going to be over when I retire, and that gives me a lot of comfort. But right now I feel physically good enough to continue so I'm gonna try to eke that out as long as I can."

But surely even the very best of what fashion and music can throw at him will offer him nowhere near the kind of challenge that comes from trying to eke out half a tenth on a Q3 lap at Monaco...

"It will be different," he admits. "In the fashion space right now, when I go and do the fashion shows, behind stage I'm more nervous than I am before a race because you're judged on what you design and put together and all these different things.

"So it will be different, but similar in many ways. And also the working relationship you have with your team is similar to how I work with my engineers, so it won't be night-and-day different. I'm sure I will miss the competition, but I'm always going to be competitive.

"Even right now, I'm playing my dad at tennis at the moment, and I'm working so hard to make sure I win. I'll probably have to have lessons because he's starting to get good! I'm always going to be competitive in absolutely everything I do, and there are always other areas to find that."

But as long he continues to love those 23-minute spells of focus with the engineers, and digging deep to find that extra 1% of car performance, what he does next will not be a factor for quite some time to come.

There is one truth to Hamilton right now: what brings him the most joy simply cannot be beaten.

"I love the racing," he smiles. "And... what else is there? Nothing else is going to feel this great."