In 2011 Lewis Hamilton was talking to the press ahead of the penultimate race of the most disappointing season of his Formula One career.
At the end of a 12-race baron patch in which he twice crashed out by his own fault, and twice finished on the podium, he was accused of not being able to handle being shown up by teammate Jenson Button.
“Rubbish,” he protested. “My issues have been much bigger than that.
“Jenson has done a great job to get things in the right place: he’s got his dad, who’s there at every single race; he’s got his manager, his friends, and his girlfriend there all the time.
“He’s got a great bubble around him, and with that he’s able to go out there and perform without any worries on his mind.
“Jenson’s in a much stronger position than me.”
Let’s call this Hamilton mark I: Hamilton before reconciling with his father, in an on-again, off-again relationship, and with an increasingly uneasy relationship with his own team.
It’s difficult to pinpoint when mark II began, but make no mistake that this second, improved Lewis has truly bloomed in 2014.
This was to be the season of Nico Rosberg, of the cool and calculating German mastering a highly technical new formula. A season for the cerebral, not the classic foot-on-the-loud-pedal drivers like Hamilton.
Certainly the first half of 2014 followed this script. His salvaging of the Canadian Grand Prix went to the heart of Rosberg’s professorial approach to driving.
But a skill as deeply instinctive as Hamilton’s was only ever going to be held down for so long. His performances were tempered only by his own mistakes as he slowly brought the car and his abilities into alignment. Five consecutive and largely uncontested victories are testament to this inevitability.
But talent tells only part of the story – that year in 2011 illustrates how deep a driver as gifted as Hamilton can sink. His moves to right himself began in the 2011–12 offseason and culminated with a move to Mercedes for a 2014 title assault.
The challenge 2014 has thrown at him would have been unimaginable this time last year, though. The title fight has been purely psychological between competitors racing in identical machinery, and has been the sternest test possible of Hamilton’s transformation.
Monaco was the first hurdle: utterly convinced of a Rosberg qualifying conspiracy that led to an effortless race win, his best efforts in the following five rounds proved ineffectual to stem Rosberg inching away with the championship lead.
Enter Belgium. Rosberg takes Hamilton out of the race in a clumsy attempt to make a point about his ability to race wheel-to-wheel.
“This means war,” said Hamilton, reflecting on that weekend after his win in Austin. “I was like, ‘I’m going to turn this up. I’m going to have to turn this up’.
“I turned the energy from that negative bomb into a positive,” he concluded, summing in a single sentence the most significant difference between our two versions of Hamilton.
Lewis is no longer someone else’s man. He doesn’t belong to his managerial father, his girlfriend, his collection of rapper and pop star friends or, as of this week, his management company, with which he parted in favour of self-management. Lewis Hamilton is now his own man.
“I have made a conscious decision these last few years, I have felt more mature,” he said after Austin with his long-awaited second world championship within touching distance.
“It goes back to growing up in Stevenage, where I never thought I would be in this position [with] people supporting me all over the world, wearing my top, the cap, and waving the flags.
“[F1] is a great platform for me to inspire others; to inspire people never to give up and to keep pushing and keep working at it to achieve what you want.”
Hamilton has made peace with himself. Old Lewis would have crumbled this season, but new Lewis has proved unstoppable.
There is one final piece to the 2014 Hamilton puzzle, however, and it is Nico Rosberg himself.
Mark Webber in 2010, infamously disenfranchised by certain elements inside Red Bull Racing, though quick to reject rumours that he received inferior equipment, did admit there was a certain something, a subtle feeling, that all things weren’t equal between himself and Sebastian Vettel:
“When young, new chargers come onto the block, that’s where the emotion is. That’s the way it is. I’ve got favourites in life. It’s human nature,” he said, explaining the strength of the Vettel–RBR bond he could never forge for himself.
Rosberg was undoubtedly at fault in Belgium, and he was publicly, shockingly, shamed for it by his own team. He was cast from the bubble he’d called home for longer than Lewis and, even if temporarily, was made an outsider.
If you were to choose a defining moment of the season, it would be this one. It was the moment Hamilton confirmed he’s a changed man. It was the moment he subtly, inadvertently, won the emotions of his team. And it was the moment he decided the championship in his favour.
Follow Michael on Twitter: @MichaelLamonato
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