no,
he
isn't
Lewis is not good at playing act
he/ his feelings can be read very easily

China07, Brazil07, France08, Canada08, Brazil08, Turkey09, British09, Australia10, Italy10, Singapore10 .....

All good examples of Hamilton falling to pieces.

Yep, some creative painting going on over "his nerves"

07 China he was rock solid while he was driving on actual rubber. Brazil he had an inconsequential red mist moment after being brake-tested by Kimi.
08 - rock solid again in very difficult circumstances.
10 - too racy and unlucky at Monza and Singapore, something weird with the brakes or braking in Brazil, or managing his tyre temps maybe, and let his brakes glaze a bit by the sound of it in Korea.

TBH I thought the end of 2010 wasn't his best work, generally, but nothing to do with nerve. Maybe the two dnf's did affect his focus.

The stewards in Austrailia bought his act and granted him a podium. So he must have some talent at 'playing act'.

Brazil 07 is the only legitimate one, and it's not a break down, it was cracking up. The rest of the race was pretty good outside of the gearbox failure and overshooting turn 1.

When i mean break down, i mean embarrassingly disheartened and flustered. Broken spirit if you will.

Canada 08 wasn't a break down, on the contrary, no braking took place.

Turkey 09, the car wasn't any good. Any 09 race is not a good example. A race where the car is good enough to win, stay in the title fight, or win the crown.

australia 10 kind of, but i didn't feel like turning the TV off since his spirit wasn't broken. It was actually pretty memorable in a positive way. The team gave the impression he was down and out with the pitstop strategy and under pressuring the tyre's in Q2.

Monza 10 wasn't really a breakdown in nerves. It happened too fast to put it down to nerves, and it was his intentions to take the risk.
Singapore wasn't his fault.

Breakdown is a loss of will power or focus leading to an under-performance. Lewis hardly has any of those. Button has a whole string of them.

Actually, they went 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1. And yes, it was indeed such a sudden fall. I simply find it way too easy to just write it down to his nerves taking down his performance. In most of the races after Turkey, he still showed excellent pace, usually faster than his teammate's, but the results weren't there due to qualifying and first corners not going his way. For instance, in Silverstone he got cut off by Trulli in T1, causing him to fall back to 9th. His race pace and attacking skills remained strong, which is why I don't agree with your theory. It was partly due to Brawn falling back because of their long-term vision (didn't entirely work out so far did it, BMW 08/09-style fail) and partly due to tyre issues in qualifying. If he had really tightened up because of nerves, it would have been obvious during races, and he wouldn't have made the overtaking moves he did.

I think that most of the posts here which are referring to drivers 'losing their nerves', whether it's about Lewis or Jenson, are overreactions based on hardly anything. These drivers are tougher than you think. Button didn't drive around half of a season being scared.

You've no proof for that whatsoever. You simply find it a perfect explanation to suit your opinion.

His car was shit to drive, he's really not going to drive several seconds per lap slower because of any title nerves. Ridiculous to explain such as 'crumbled completely'. He had nothing to lose at that point, nerves were no issue whatsoever.

The worst condition in which I've Lewis ever seen, was after his FP crash at Japan this year.
The pictures where terrible as he stood there under that bridge
IMO this was the nearest thing to a breakdown in Lewis F1 career
He himself admitted, he was down on the floor after that chrash, but the team has lifted him up gain
and we saw how he came back

Obviously the term is used relative to the elusive group of top F1 drivers, not talking about you, me, or Joe Sixpack.

Actually I find this stuff one of the most intriguing aspects in any kind of sport. In extreme cases, the mind can make all the difference. Don't know if the names mean anything to you, but there were two top decathlon athletes in the eighties, Brit Daley Thompson and my countryman Jürgen Hingsen. The latter was basically the better athlete, in the majority of the ten disciplines his personal records were better than Thompsons. Yet every time they did go head-to-head for a World or Olympic title, Thompson won, simply by out-psyching Hingsen.

The red mist moment was all about his buddy Alonso passing.

Ferrari played that start perfectly, getting Massa and Kimi in front of the McLarens and putting Hamilton back into the grips of Alonso. In fact their strategy that day was counting on a 'red mist' reaction from Hamilton as it would be the only way for Kimi to have a chance to be wdc and they were not disappointed! Kimi's wonderful little lockup/slide/correction was the perfect setup and Hamilton fell on it hard. An absolute masterpiece of strategy and execution. One of F1's great moments.

Good times. Here is a video http://www.break.com/usercontent/2007/10/S...razil-GP-386094



Him having a fit in the run off area at Singapore and throwing the steering wheel would have been my pick. The post France 08 paranoia would be another good choice. Button seems to avoid such displays.

Well, on second thought I guess I have to agree with the bolded. But nonetheless he keeps trying to act, and way harder than any other driver I can think of. That has to count for something!

Yep we can't pin down each individual race to tightening up, fair enough, but it was such a trend, 9 races and starting with his pressure home race. Silverstone, he qualified 6th.

I do remember he and his RE (whom MS has now replaced) had 3 or so races where in trying to fix the tyre warming they fried them instead, and I know he felt he was driving well, but it still looked exactly like tightening up, the way it started and stopped on cue with the pressure.

The fact that this trend started in Silverstone in front of his home crowd would indicate that something was wrong mentally. I'd still like to put it down as coincidental though. Home race pressure can certainly have an effect, but 9 races long? If he really cracked those weekends due to pressure, there wouldn't be overtakes like on Nakajima at the Hungaroring and on Kubica at Suzuka. He would've stayed behind them like the conservative puppy we know him too well as.

What it ultimately came down to was very hot weather in Bahrain, Spain, Monaco and Turkey, and then in Silverstone it was 10 degrees. He failed to manage his tyres and to this day this issue still hurts him at certain moments. I'm afraid he will never completely get rid of it. Because of his driving style, he's one of the worst drivers in managing his tyres on critical moments. Unfortunately whenever the subject comes up there are people claiming he's great at it...

Where is your proof?

These names don't mean anything to me indeed, but I get the picture. I understand how it can be an interesting aspect, it certainly is. In F1 however, they're all covered by helmets, and the moments that we really find out what the drivers think behind the wheel are scarce. Makes it easy however to accuse drivers beside your favorite as 'crumbling' and 'cracking' when they're not doing as well as they're supposed to. I don't want to believe too much of it.

His post race interviews, press statements from McLaren.

I've referenced each of your para's to aid my reply:

1) The Fisi example is completely irrelevant. You are using an example of Fisi beating some teammates, whilst he himself was then beaten by a different teammate (Alonso). This is completely irrelevant to your speculation that Lewis beats Jenson in a poor car but will lose to Jenson in a good car. Find me an example of a driver who soundly beats him teammate in a poor car and in turn gets beaten by the same teammate in a good car. Otherwise it's all apples and oranges.

2) I don't disagree with you that the advantage of adaptability is diminished in a good car. That's obvious. The key point though is that a car is not static throughout the season, the tracks change, the track conditions change, the tyres degrade, in-race damage occurs etc. Not to mention that without refuelling, as per 2010 there will remain a massive change in the car's balance as fuel load wears off, and with this season's regulations it can't even be compensated for by front wing adjustment. So a perfectly balanced car at the start of the race is going to be comparatively poor by the last third, and vice versa. And if the car is setup for a compromise between quali and race, then it will be the more adaptable driver that continues to extract the most from it in both quali and race, except for the short window of the middle third of the race where the less adaptable driver could be as quicker or quicker according to your theory. Still doesn't help him if he gets whipped in quali and the other two thirds of the race.

3) Schumacher isn't a proven great example at all. You are comparing Schumacher in his dominant era against a much older one who has been out of racing for 3 yrs and paired up against one of the top 5 drivers on the grid. You may be right that Schumi's relatively poor performance could be down to the car not suiting him, but before 2010 it was commonly acknowledged that one of Schumi's greatest skills was his adaptability. One of those guys proven to be quick even when his gearbox failed leaving him with just 1 gear. We need to see how he performs this season, and for your theory to hold, he needs to be quicker than his teammate by a margin sufficient enough to discount the performance gain as attributable solely to a second season to get back in the groove after being out for 3 yrs. Even then, the performance difference could simply be down to which driver the tyre suits more.

4) Your theory completely forgets those many instances, in his 4 seasons so far, where Lewis' practise and Q1 times were well off the mark. But working with his engineer, a few adjustments and setup changes, and he comes back to bag pole out of nowhere. Don't make the mistake of confusing a driver that is adaptable to one that does not know what he wants out of the car to suit him best.

5) I have little comment on this as I have no idea (like yourself) about how the two driver's setups differ or not. But regarding the smooth part, it's overstated. Here's a very smooth lap by Lewis (one of many, a quick search reveals) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfCCsjotXoc difficult to be much smoother than that. As a comparison, here's Jenson in Turkey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbeNokhlTbI watch from 1:00 onwards. I don't see much difference, in fact Lewis' lap seems to be smoother. Especially interesting is that Lewis' is a qualy lap vs Jenson's race lap and you would expect that a quali lap, which will of course be more aggressive to get one lap performance out of the tyre, to be far less smoother than a race lap where the aim is to take far greater car of the tyres. Also, as a direct comparison in the same race here's Lewis chasing Webber http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBvPl13uwpc I see very little difference in "smoothness", similar steering inputs even though Jenson was in clear air and Lewis was chasing and keeping up with a RB6, and the only main difference I can note is that Lewis gets on the throttle notably quicker than Jenson, but not enough to result in any power oversteer.

7) I agree, we don't know how he'll react if he's ever beaten. Personally, for me he comes across very hard on himself and the team. I don't get the impression that he expects nor wants preferential treatment, so if he gets beaten on an equal footing I would expect that he looks at his own performance very hard and strives to improve. But no one knows.

I disagree as I believed that Jenson looked extremely nervous in the second half of his 2009 campaign. His performance dropped right off in comparison with Rubens in the second half and I believe that it was playing strongly on Jenson's mind that he had to be ultra-conservative to avoid a DNF. However it reached a stage where he just fizzled off in the second half but took the title easily on account of a dominant first half. Kudos to him on that first half - I'm not going to excuse it on a fast car and a teammate who had problems, as the fact is that he grabbed the bull by the horns and took a dominant 6 wins in a row.

But had the other cars been on pace and he was genuinely challenged and prevented from running away with such a dominant points leads in the first half, he wouldn't have had the luxury of resting on his laurels and driving a conservative race aiming purely to score some points without DNF. He would have had to find a balance between pushing for strong points, or even wins if the points were tight enough, without resulting in a DNF. Don't get me wrong, he still showed in Brazil that he can pull out an aggressive race after a daffodil quali, but it was one race only. Lewis too, has shown many times, he can follow up a poor race near end of season with a blazing one e.g poor Fuji 2009 followed up by a dominant China GP.

Who's going to admit to falling apart during the race? jenson and Mclaren would be the last ones to admit.

The spin was like he threw his hands off the steering and shouted out " I give up, I cant take it any more, 12th!!".

And you still have no proof. Show me exact wording to justify his lackadaisical demeanor in the race.

Jenson always looks unsure and disheartened in the interviews anyway. At one time it looked like he was going to cry, it could have been the same Korean Race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zd9pl5vXXw

The man is broken. He can't even look in the camera. Lower lip shivering, shrill in his voice "I d ..d.. din't have any grip".

Show you the exact wording? Listen to his words in the video you searched for yourself. Should be clear enough. Although obviously you don't believe his words and you'd rather believe your own story. To each his own.

Especially amazing how you describe his spin, with his hands of the steering... oh really? I'm quite sure he kept his hands on there as he saved the car immediately and continued.


The man isn't broken, he can look in the camera as he did, his lower lip wasn't shivering, and that's simply his voice. It wasn't an unusual interview from Jenson at all.

If you see more in it, it's really just you. And yeah, you still have no proof.

Oh my God!!!!!! Is that Jenson? I`ve never seen that interview before. He almost looked like he was utterly pissed and wanted the camera away from his face!!
DAMN!!!!
Well Jenson is a good driver. He perhaps had a bad day on that day. Thats the reason he didnt finish in the top 5.

Wow, the power of wishful thinking!

This is the broken man who finished about one second behind Lewis in the next 2 races.

IIRC, Jenson was trying a new brake balancing device during that race, and it seems reasonable to think that it might have needed a bit more tweaking.

He was really seemed to be at an extremely low point, even lower than spa but I do not think he was broken. It must have hit him that his championship hopes were over and that Hamilton still had chance at it.

Exactly. But you do have to admire the imagination of some on here, and their ability to spin nothing into something...

Cringeworthy isn't it?

You have a good imagination. Button is pissed and angry but not broken.

Here is an example of being broken and unable to look into the camera:

LH at his blamepology.

So Hamilton lied? Who hasn't? Those in glass houses, springs to mind.

Liegate again?

The trolltastic answer to everything

Did he died?

Any video? just a still. Anyway he is rightfully upset. And his feelings weren't reflected on track. He has never given up on track and fell out of fight. On the contrary his teammate has broken down in his championship year from the midway point.

The only reason i posted the Jenson video is evidence that clearly the guy was down and out. Never saw a driver fall out of contention so miserably. So this talk that Jenson has more mental strenght to close a season is hog wash.
My video proves it. Lewis went on to fight in the last race, while Jenson was hiding his tears in the shadow of his cap.
Lucky for him it was raining in Korea, he was able to camouflage the tears.

To reinforce my point without the badgering , Jenson is not stronger mentally than Lewis, both are equally vulnerable. Lewis being less affected on track, as he doesn't spin out and fade away in 12th. He always keeps going, even when the team wants him to call it a day and save the equipment. Button is more likely to throw in the towel and fade.

It is- somebody is now using a still image to read the mind of a driver.

Somebody? I assume you mean me!

And who ever heard of using a still image to capture the essence of a situation or an emotion, how radical. Stills as I am sure you know can be the best way to explain a point of view, an idea or even a entire era. Anyway we don't need a still or video to read the mind of this driver, we have written words:

The world champion, who was close to tears, claimed it was the “worst thing I've experienced in my life”

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-spo...e-by-mclaren.do

In context of this thread, Button has never even come close to the emotional lows as seen from LH.

F1 drivers are humans no machines, if sometime one of them cries, so what?
I would have found it far more questionable if Lewis had smiled at this special situation

So true. But it is more about the mental weakness that sees Lewis getting himself into situations such as this.

You mean Lewis is inherently human, not a virtuous God, and that makes him weak?

Please will both sides stop trolling.

No not at all.

But imo for him to maximize all that natural talent he needs to be stronger mentally.

Why do you guys keep trying to defend against a guy who thinks Glock intentionally pulled over at Brazil 2008? Do you really think you'll convince him? He could be 12 y.o for all we know. Painful.

I know what Halifax is all about, if i reply to him its either because im bored or i have to question a severe flaw of logic that i feel is too great either for him..

If you read my post history concerning him, you would know i never subject myself to prolonged futile debates with him. The real questions is why do i have to justify
my own actions on this thread?

You don't have to justify, sorry I asked, continue feeding as you were.

Apology accepted and thanks for the permission forum moderato- Artshelly

Once again the thread has become about other posters and not the issues, and only just after I requested people to stop trolling too. Thread closed.