It’s been a month to forget for Lewis Hamilton and if he isn’t careful, 2016 might become a year to forget.
The reigning World Champion has endured the sight of his teammate and championship rival Nico Rosberg winning three races in succession and snatching the lead back in the drivers’ championship.
All the while Hamilton has aired a quiet comfort, bordering on complacency.
His recent form has raised a few eyebrows, and Hamilton has steadily shifted from an unbackable favourite for the title to an even money prospect.
Even staunch Hamilton defenders like Sky F1 commentator and former driver Martin Brundle have noticed that he doesn’t quite been himself lately.
“Thinking back to Monza, when it all settled out and Lewis’ bad start was out of the way, he didn’t start catching Nico did he? He didn’t have the pace we sometimes see he has in a straight fight, which makes me think he hasn’t got quite enough there at the moment,” Brundle told Sky Sports.
Having claimed his third championship and drawing level with his childhood hero Ayrton Senna last year, we may be witnessing a champion in decline.
Could it be that, apart from his home race, there’s little challenge left?
Hamilton is a man who believes that, given equal machinery, he can beat any other driver in the field.
It was this self-belief that saw Hamilton pull off an unlikely win in Monaco, a special victory made all the sweeter after watching a few slip through his fingers in recent years.
From that point on he was unbeatable, culminating at Silverstone where a memorable win combined with the images of him crowd-surfing epitomised both his blessed run of form and state of well-being.
Since the summer break and the Belgian Grand Prix however, Hamilton’s mojo has been missing. He’s still good, but he’s not as good as he can be.
At Spa, his run of good luck came to an end taking substantial grid penalities and starting from the back.
He took his medicine and cracked pole position in Monza over Rosberg in a two-hour race. After a slow start, he looked pedestrian as Brundle said during the race and finished second to his only real competitor given the pure horsepower race.
His performance in Singapore was similarly lacklustre and reminiscent of his race weekend in Baku.
There, too, he was off the pace during qualifying and simply wasn’t in the groove during the race.
Rosberg has traditionally been strong in the final rounds of the season, while Hamilton has been stronger at tracks like Suzuka and Austin where the drivers’ feel for the car translates into outright pace.
When it comes to overtaking, Rosberg’s teeth aren’t as sharp or threatening as Hamilton’s, yet Nico has proven time and again that he is perfectly capable of quietly putting together near-perfect race weekends.
The reality is that despite his troubled start to the year, disciplined driving should still have delivered another title for Hamilton.
Whether he has enough left in the tank when the final race in Abu Dhabi rolls around remains to be seen, assuming that his teammate hasn’t wrapped things up by then. No double points this year, of course!
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