How losing brings out the worst in Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton lost the Malaysian Grand Prix from pole position to Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. And he wasn’t too happy about it. Losing brings out the worst in Hamilton. He’s a far cry from the proverbial stiff upper lip the British are generally known for. Case and point being– fifty laps into the Malaysian Grand Prix– Lewis Hamilton gets a crucial update from his race engineer, “Forecast to catch Vettel with five laps rema-” Hamilton: “Don’t talk to me through the corners! I nearly just went off!” But this wasn’t the first time during the Malaysian Grand Prix that Lewis came across as a spoilt brat. Fans were cheesed off with Lewis right at the beginning of the race itself when he complained that his steering wheel was “too hot” after being left in the hot sun for too long. [caption id=“attachment_2189501” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the garage before qualifying at the Malaysian Grand prix.
Reuters[/caption] Even after the pit stops Hamilton was sullen in his radio messages to his team: “This is the wrong tyre.” Engineer: “It was the only choice we had.” As American journalist Heywood Broun has once observed, that sport does not build character, but reveals it. As far as Hamilton is concerned: motor racing has shown he can be a pretty bad loser. Too often Hamilton has been happy when things are going his way and he’s winning but it’s a completely different side of him that we see when he loses with his curt replies to interviews, open criticism of his team over the radio and his massive sulks. Surprisingly, after multiple incidents of bad behaviour last year on national television, both by his former and current team McLaren and Mercedes, chose to go with the “lets shower him with praise and gratitude approach” on social media. Nobody in his team or management has managed to alter this badly behaved attitude of his personality. Or maybe they’ve tried and failed. From the 2009 lying incident in Melbourne when, under pressure from the McLaren bigwigs, Hamilton changed his story about slowing to let Jarno Trulli pass him under the yellow flag. To his last years ‘fracas’ with Nico Rosberg, where he was criticised and labelled a ‘sore loser’ after his refusal to acknowledge Nico on the podium following the latter’s second consecutive victory at the Monaco Grand Prix. These incidents have not won him any fans. Even that weird moment at the Japanese Grand Prix (in 2014) where he compared Ayrton Senna’s deliberate crash into Alain Prost as when “some dude comes and messes with your chick, and you want to kill that dude!” Hamilton has been a little hard to love. The Telegraph right before the Abu Dhabi race asked, “Is he the polite racer from Stevenage who just wants to do right by his family and fans? Or is he the aspiring music mogul, the superstar who once had H.A.M. – short for ‘Hard as a M———-r’ emblazoned on his helmet, and still carries the message on his Twitter page?” From the sheltered life growing up under the exclusive McLaren patronage and the powerful influence of his father Anthony Hamilton, he has been groomed for his current profession since the age of 6 – which may explain his complete maturity on the track and immaturity off it. Former British driver Sir Sterling Moss, while speaking about Hamilton, once said: “I think mentally in driving he is 40 or 50, but in other things he’s 15. But there we are – he leads his life as he likes.” But lest we be really unfair to Lewis Hamilton there’s hardly a sports star who’s not let out some steam after a painful defeat – blaming their adversaries, the referee, whoever; or staying tight-lipped when journalists are looking for a quote. Chelsea’s José Mourinho does this and so has Tiger Woods, Hamilton is not alone. But that doesn’t mean he can’t take a leaf from someone like Roger Federer’s book. After all, as the Beatles once sang, ‘all you need is love.’