How one kitchen conversation with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff helped take Lewis Hamilton to the next level
Speaking in the wake of Sunday's US Grand Prix victory, the Englishman explained how a heart-to-heart with Wolff over winter brought new direction to his approach
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Your support makes all the difference.After his ninth victory of the season, Lewis Hamilton needs only to finish fifth in Mexico this weekend to clinch his fourth world championship, even if arch-rival Sebastian Vettel wins.
Three races remain and with Hamilton’s 66-point lead that is the hard reality that the German and his Ferrari team have to face after losing the lead to the Englishman on the sixth lap of Sunday’s US GP, and seeing him control the race thereafter.
As Mercedes celebrated their fourth consecutive constructors’ world title, team boss Toto Wolff said that he thought that Hamilton has this year been driving at a new level. The Englishman put that down to a meeting the pair had in his kitchen over the winter. There, he said, they discussed everything, and after three acrimonious years teamed with Nico Rosberg, who beat him to last year’s title following his engine blow-up in Malaysia, Hamilton left with no baggage.
“I went to see him at the end of last year and our meeting was crucial in solidifying longevity with the team,” Hamilton confirmed last night, as he tried to smoke a celebratory cigar before quickly admitting that it tasted “disgusting.”
“We both put everything on the table and as a result we were able to build an even stronger relationship.
“Toto does an exceptional job of running this team. And my relationship with my engineers for the last five years has led to great communication. I asked myself, ‘How can we get the most out of the driver?’ I wanted to change how I used to go about my factory days when I was at McLaren. They were generally a waste. Now I wanted to get the maximum from them. I’m not one who can sit in a meeting for five hours; I can’t focus that long. So we worked to improve the things we could improve, and that helped dramatically.
“I’m in the best shape, physically and mentally. Physically I have made a big step; I changed my diet around Singapore time onwards.” He became a vegan, and says it is really working for him.
“Ultimately I’m trying to live and drive to my utmost potential, and today I was in that zone.”
It’s been suggested that a lot of the inner calm that he has been channelling into success on the track this year is due to former team-mate Nico Rosberg’s retirement, because he isn’t having to expend emotional energy on fighting his team-mate.
“Everybody makes assumptions,” he said. “But nobody outside of the team can tell how the dynamic was. But for sure it was uncomfortable. This year after that talk with Toto we’ve really worked on the relationship, I’ve stuck with my engineers even though he said I could go back to my old crew, and everyone has done an exceptional job. The relationship with the whole team is stronger than ever.”
He went on to explain how much better it had made the dynamic having to focus outwards on a new enemy, a rival team. Right from the start, Ferrari posed a huge new challenge.
“It’s great having to do that. The focus is totally different. The battle within a team is like a hurricane: there is that strong energy that has no direction, nowhere else to go. Now we can fire that bundle of energy into developing the car, it’s a different dynamic.”
And he praised his new team-mate, Valtteri Bottas, who was called up from Williams to replace Rosberg after the German suddenly announced his retirement days after clinching last year’s title in Abu Dhabi.
“Valtteri is an exceptional human being. He gets that from his dad, who always comes and says hello. Valtteri wants to get there [to the top] by merit, and he holds nothing back. Team-mate is a contradictory word because you are there to beat them, right from your early days in Formula 3 or whatever.
“But the dynamic works well here. Ours is not an easy car to drive, so it’s been tough. Valtteri got the best out of it in the first half of the season and has struggled lately, but he’ll go from strength to strength. I’ve just been able to take the car to another level in the second half.”
The trouble with his relationship with Rosberg was that they had been fighting one another since they were 13, and there was thus a huge amount of baggage between them. When asked whether the new calmer atmosphere could have been possible with Rosberg, his answer was uncompromising. “No.”
And now, after that inner team calmness played its role in a majestic performance that put Mercedes back on top exactly when it mattered most, he heads to Central America ready to embrace his destiny.
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