Perusing the news this morning I found a piece of consistency that I thought I’d share with you. In the past, Lewis Hamilton has had his share of race incidents with negative impacts on his season. That could be said of just about any driver but in Lewis’s case, he’s been aggressive in his approach (which I am on the record as appreciating) and McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh has said on different occasions that Lewis is a racer and they wouldn’t want him any other way.
To those ends, it’s nice to see that Lewis has reflected on his incident with Williams F1 driver Pastor Maldonado and the takeaway is?
“Sometimes you have to accept when things don’t go your way in racing,” he said.
“Obviously it was frustrating to lose out so close to the finish, but that’s motor racing: you put it behind you and move on to the next race – which, happily for me, is at my home circuit of Silverstone.
“It doesn’t really alter the way I go racing because I race to win, and that’s what I’ll be doing, especially at my home grand prix.”
Lewis races to win and I appreciate the consistent approach to his craft. We could parse words and offer angles on his race craft and how finishing a race is better than being too aggressive for a win at every moment but I think Lewis knows that concept very well. In the end, he is making a choice that victories at just about any cost are what he’s after and allowing Maldonado to simply waltz by him was never going to be something he can get his mind to do with clear conscience.
This approach has it’s ups and downs and I’d be interested to know what you think about it. If you are a win it or bin it type of person, you have to realize that championships may be fewer and farther between as most title rely on consistency and maximizing every race for a points finish if victory is out of reach. Lewis knows this and will most likely approach his season in this manner but when the heat is on and the passions run high, he suggests that he’ll have Maldonado-type incidents because he races to win.
