In claiming his 69th pole position on Saturday, Lewis Hamilton surpassed the great Michael Schumacher’s record pole tally, and confirmed himself as the most prolific F1 polesitter of all time, having started more than one in three of his career races from pole.
The sight of the yellow-helmeted maestro claiming the Saturday plaudits is a staple scene of the past decade in Formula 1, and a sight with poignant similarities to the Brazilian legend that has always been such a point of reference for Lewis. Equalling Ayrton’s pole tally in Canada this year, the scene of Hamilton’s very first pole in F1, and being presented with one of Senna’s original helmets, is arguably one of the most evocative moments of recent seasons.
Hamilton has reached these incredible milestones by simply being ferocious, relentless and unbelievably fast. Hamilton has consistently collected poles no matter the weather, the opposition or the circuit; indeed, there are only four circuits (Magny-Cours, Suzuka, Istanbul Park and India’s Buddh Circuit) that Lewis has raced on in F1 and not collected pole position. And this consistently violent turn of Saturday pace persevered despite four consecutive years of title dominance from Sebastian Vettel, and in spite of an initially slow MP4-24 that would go on take Hamilton to four poles in 2009.
The fact that Hamilton has collected poles in cars that were not title challengers – such as the 2009 McLaren MP4-24 and the 2013 Mercedes AMG W04 – arguably debunks the suggestion that Lewis’ pole tally is solely a result of the consistent front-running pace of his machinery across his career. Even in the dominant Mercedes years, virtuoso performances at Silverstone last year, or at Spa or Melbourne the year before made a fellow Saturday specialist in Nico Rosberg look thoroughly average.
Hamilton’s unique ability as a qualifier is in evidence beyond doubt, however, the specifics of what makes Lewis so adept over a single lap is worthy of further explication.
Hamilton has always been aggressive: early in his career the urge to rotate the car by any means possible often saw McLaren’s protégé achieving angles of slippage unbecoming of a single-seater driver. Lewis would instinctively use his vast car control repertoire as a crutch for dialling in more rear brake-bias and more front-wing angle than any other driver could handle.
Lewis, be it in karts, the junior categories or F1, has always had an intrinsic gyroscopic sensitivity, an ability to anticipate balance changes and carry forward momentum regardless. Together with Lewis’ cat-like reactions, Hamilton arguably possesses a greater mastery of a racing car’s recalcitrant tendencies than any of his peers; indeed, it could be argued that Hamilton’s ability to drive around oversteer surpasses that of even Ayrton Senna.
Braking has also a key feature of Hamilton’s qualifying performances. In combining the power to brake deeper and harder than his opposition with the dexterity to modulate his left foot right into the apex without locking, the Englishman has routinely made the crucial time on the brakes during pole laps.
As this comparison with Bottas’ pole in Bahrain graphically shows, even on a lap that didn’t claim pole for Hamilton, how the triple-champion makes gains under heavy braking. In a more generic sense, the fact that Hamilton is such a stalwart polesitter at brake-sensitive circuits such as Shanghai, Montreal and Monza is arguably indicative of Lewis’ prowess on the brakes.
Early in his career, Lewis would often look to carry a significant amount of brake pedal travel into the apex, often resulting in a barrage of lock-ups in practice, but often culminating in a final qualifying attempt beyond the reach of his rivals.
However, it was not until his move to Mercedes, and his subsequent development of a generally less coercive Saturday driving style, that Hamilton would produce some of the most faultless laps of his career. As was the case at Silverstone this year, in dialling out some of his instinctive aggression, and in using the full extent of the grip available from the chassis, the former spectacle of lairy moments of opposite-lock has now been swapped for eye-watering gaps back to the chasing pack.
Whilst Hamilton’s cocktail of talent and experience has more broadly produced the complete and fearsomely imposing competitor he is in 2017, it has most markedly been apparent in the dying seconds of qualifying. Stellar laps this year in Baku (link to onboard) and Silverstone (link to onboard) are emblematic of Lewis’ acrobatic, authoritative command of his car, and verge on being a perfect execution of the essential trade-off between precision and aggression.
There is no such thing as a truly perfect lap: an engineer will always be on hand with a data trace showing how it was theoretically possible to improve. But that is not what anyone is thinking when Hamilton is in his qualifying groove; when the car is squirming and gyrating under the under the immense cornering loads, but relentlessly maintaining forward momentum under Hamilton’s command.
Arguably, the fact that unlike Hulkenberg or Grosjean, Lewis is not an exclusive ‘qualifying specialist’ and routinely translates his Saturday pace into Sunday results is a more important thread of his excellence than his pole tally. And yet, however eclectic his abilities as a driver is, there is never any doubt about who the grand prix venue is watching most closely in the final seconds of qualifying, and he usually doesn’t disappoint.
