As he nears his Ferrari bow, Lewis Hamilton is said to be “past his prime,” according to celebrity Formula 1 fan, Jeremy Clarkson.
The 40-year-old’s preparations for his first season with the Maranello outfit are well underway, having arrived in Italy to pandemonium from the Tifosi last week.
Hamilton put the 2022 F1-75 through its paces at Ferrari’s private Fiorano test track, in full view of the world’s media and fans who flocked to catch a glimpse of the seven-time World Champion.
The former Mercedes driver also posted a photo of himself – dressed in a dark suit and overcoat and standing next to an F40 road car in-front of Enzo Ferrari’s house – that reached over five million likes on Instagram.
It was also the subject of parody from the former Top Gear presenter, who posed likewise in-front of a Range Rover as well as some of the animals on his Diddly Squat farm.
Is Lewis Hamilton ‘past his prime’?
Hamilton has seemed happy and bullish about his prospects with the team, but Clarkson, writing his column for the Sun newspaper, has questioned Hamilton’s motives for the move.
“It could be argued that Lewis Hamilton wants a record-breaking eighth world championship before he retires, and moved to Ferrari because he reckons that this year they will have the fastest car.
“He may have a point. Early indications on the rumour mill suggest it’s very fast indeed.
“However, if he’s so keen on that eighth world title, you’d imagine that he’d have arrived at the factory on day one, keen to know the car’s secrets and how he can extract the most from its vast arsenal of racing trickery.
“Instead, he turned up in an SUV in a suit and tie and posed for pictures before talking to fans, under the watchful eye of a video drone which luckily was there to capture the moment.
“Next, there was a tour of the team’s headquarters where, in slow motion, we saw the fawning engineers and the applause.
“And then, eventually, he went on to the track, in an F1 Ferrari that’s three years old.
“I’m told his new house isn’t anywhere near the team’s HQ. It’s in Milan, and he doesn’t even commute in a Ferrari road car, choosing instead to use Fiat’s helicopter.
“It made me wonder. What is Lewis now? A driver? Or a superstar?
“What I do know is he’ll have his work cut out to beat his team-mate Charles Leclerc, who speaks Italian, knows the team, doesn’t spend quite so long posing for pictures and, thanks to a single-lap shootout, is regarded by many to be the fastest driver of them all.
“Maybe Lewis is aware of this.
“And maybe he signed for Ferrari for a different reason – he knows he’s past his prime now and he didn’t want to retire having never driven for motorsport’s crown jewel.
“Either way, I wish him well.”
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