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So, this is it. I remember when Michael retired for the first time, I, as many others, assumed we would never see another driver get even close to these records. Alonso looked like he could maybe do so after winning back to back championships, but then his career nosedived at McLaren and his move back to Renault wasn’t much of a success either, costing him another two valuable years of his prime. Then Sebastian Vettel started racking up those wins and championships very early into his career and you would have been forgiven for believing he could beat the records put in place by his mentor one day. Lewis’s career had stagnated at that point, but then the hybrid era began, and the rest is history.
Look, I do not believe that this 91st win means anything with regards to Lewis’s ability. It is a number, an impressive one, but merely a number. What it means to me as a fan of Lewis is that we have witnessed the rare occasion of a driver’s talent and performance being rewarded statistically in a way that we haven’t seen with other drivers, who would have been either just as deserving or at least close to deserving. Fernando Alonso being the best example I can think of.
In recent years I have moved away more and more from pointless online-debates about who’s the supposedly “Greatest Driver of All Times”, ironically, all the while Lewis kept improving his stats and adding more credibility to the claim of being the GOAT, at least in the eyes of those, who measure greatness in that particular way. The fact of the matter is that any attempt in doing so will ultimately fall short one way or another, either leading to intellectually embarrassing rankings or an inflationary use of cross comparisons, which are mostly reductionist in trying to handle a moving target as if it was stationary.
When I think back to all the years I have been supporting Lewis, I do not remember the numbers, I remember the moments. Moments of greatness on track, moments of disappointment or despair (thanks McLaren), moments of delight and relief. Supporting Lewis over the years has provided me with so much joy, sometimes with anger and sadness, but in hindsight, I would not want to miss the few bad moments as they made the good ones so much better. His first World Championship would not have felt as good if it had not been for the dramatic way in which he lost the title in his rookie season. His second World Championship would not have been as satisfying if it had not been for the five-year drought at McLaren and Mercedes. His fourth Championship would not have felt as relieving if it had not been for the unfortunate way in which he lost the previous one in 2016.
Equalling Schumacher’s record and breaking it soon is the logical result of a driver/car-combination this sport has never seen before and nothing more than that. For those who supported Lewis over the course of his career, this 91st win will not make a difference in the way they perceive him, and neither will it for those who are, for whatever reason, still underestimating him. Whatever we all think of him, he’ll continue to be impressive driving an F1 car on the limit and coming out ahead more often than all the other drivers on the grid until one day he retires and another driver will take his place to repeat that and some of us will still be watching a bit of greatness to brighten up our lives for an hour and a half every fortnight – and so the circle of life will continue.
Congratulations Lewis, you've come a long way since that sunny day in June 2007, when James Allan proclaimed that this would be "surely the first of many". How right he turned out to be.
