Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton has stressed that no one single person is responsible for positive changes within a team, as he charges towards his seventh Drivers’ Championship in Formula 1.
Should Hamilton see out the season at the top of the standings he will match Michael Schumacher’s Championship record on the all-time list.
Following his victory at the Eifel Grand Prix last weekend, Hamilton equalled Schumacher’s tally of 91 wins.
Hamilton joined Mercedes after it finished fifth in the Constructors’ Championship in 2012 but the team emerged as the dominant marque in the hybrid era.
Schumacher, meanwhile, joined Ferrari in the mid-1990s and ended its two-decade wait for a Drivers’ crown when he won the first of five-in-a-row in 2000.
When it was put to Hamilton that some suggest his success is purely down to having the fastest car, Hamilton said: “When you hear some of those things it’s not always the nicest thing to hear.
“I’m not mad at it, what I do know is those that often say those things or make those comments they just don’t know.
“I think in general in life we can often give the wrong opinion when we don’t have the full facts or have the full knowledge of how it really is.
“Having now been in the sport this long, years ago when they talked about Michael turning Ferrari around, the fact is it is not one individual.”
Hamilton asserted that the collaborative effort from all the individuals within Mercedes has resulted in the team being the benchmark for seven successive years.
“I have not turned Mercedes around, Michael did not turn Ferrari around, as much as I love Michael and he is a legend, it wasn’t just him, there’s so many people around in the background,” Hamilton said.
“But it is the collaboration. The thing with a driver like Michael and I our job is to kind of be the rudder, you’ve got this huge powerful force behind you with such intelligence, but on a computer and numbers it’ll tell you the perfect car is so and so.
“I think there’s something the computer can’t simulate and that’s feel, that’s yore, the feeling of the care turning and pitching and all these different things.
“So our job is to point them in the right direction to move forward, and continue to elevate and hopefully inspire the guys you work with.
“That’s something I’ve been incredibly proud of, there are so many, every single person in my team, and in the sport generally, in these teams, they are remarkable people.”
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