Durban - History will judge Lewis Hamilton as being one of the greatest in Formula One and modern-day sport.
I say this as someone who has a liking for the underdog Formula One team Haas and Daniel Ricciardo, particularly due to the strong performances of McLaren’s Ricciardo and Haas team manager Günther Steiner in Netflix’s Drive to Survive series.
Recently amidst his poor performances in the new year, many critics of Hamilton have been overjoyed with excitement with seemingly implicit “told you so” comments, implying that Hamilton had only been winning all these years by virtue of having the best car on the grid.
Unsurprisingly, these comments most often come from people who have a soft spot for rightwing causes and yearn for Formula One to return to earlier times when its exclusionary and elitist nature was not discussed at all.
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It is hardly surprising that it comes from a significant section of the Formula 1 fan base, especially considering that the sport has been historically a very conservative upper-middle class and elitist one, so much so that it did not even boycott apartheid South Africa for many years while other sports considered it the pariah regime.
While this is true that Hamilton has benefited from having the best car to an extent, it also misses the point and downplays the respect Hamilton deserves. Hamilton did have the best car on the grid for years but the same applies to fellow legends, Sebastian Vettel who won four straight World Championship titles and Michael Schumacher who won seven titles.
Both Schumacher and Vettel would definitely not have won Championships had they been driving middle of the pack cars.
Another fact that Hamilton naysayers conveniently avoid addressing is the fact that he has regularly outperformed his car and won a race in every year that he has been in Formula One, including when he was racing for a non-Championship worthy McLaren team in terminal decline after 2008.
Some brilliant racing between K-Mag and the 7x World Champion Lewis Hamilton on Sunday! 😮![CDATA[]]>👏#HaasF1 #SaudiArabianGP pic.twitter.com/okaoOqPml0
Some have also been celebrating the fact that Hamilton was recently outperformed by younger teammate George Russell, even though this is to be expected as Russell is younger and with quicker reflexes while Hamilton is technically past his prime.
By comparison, Schumacher was being outperformed by a very young Renault driver Fernando Alonso at the same stage of his career.
Hamilton will not be remembered as being one of the greatest due to his performances on track, but also due to his activities off it. He has brought a more diverse fan base to Formula One which it would not have otherwise had, and also called for the sport to rectify its exclusionary nature.
Everyone is certainly entitled to not support Hamilton and root for whichever team they wish, however it is safe to say that much of the Hamilton hostility is rooted in jealousy and hatred for the seven-time World Champion and 103 times race winner.
We do not need to support Hamilton, but he definitely deserves respect.