DC - Lewis Hamilton has the momentum

It would be wrong to take a snapshot in time and say Lewis Hamilton's victory in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday was a defining moment in the season. Hamilton had the upper hand on Rosberg all weekend and put in a champion's drive to recover from a poor start to win, but equally there have been races this season in which Rosberg has been the stronger of the two. But it is certainly a defining moment in terms of their public perceptions.

Rosberg has been around for a while now - ­ this is his ninth season - but his has been a slow-burn F1 career. We are only now seeing how he reacts when racing consistently with the best at the very front of the field. He is a presentable and perfectly nice guy, but the boos Rosberg received on the podium for the second race in succession just go to show you cannot manufacture popularity.Hamilton is probably more popular today than at any time in his career.

People were perhaps not so sure who he was when he first came in, and then there was a period when we kind of lost Lewis a bit as he was growing into being the multi-millionaire racing driver.But now he has firmly found who he is -¬ his own sense of style, what he likes in terms of partners and lifestyle, LA, all that sort of thing. And what we are left with is a sense of sincerity.His heart-on-the-sleeve style seems to have connected with the public.

It does not matter whether people particularly like what that style is; I just think the public respect honesty and sincerity.I'm not saying Rosberg is not honest, but he doesn't reveal as much of his personality. With Hamilton, it's very obvious that what you see is what you get.In some senses, Hamilton is a little like Nigel Mansell. When Mansell used to talk about the public, it wasn't just a line. He really meant it. He believed they loved him and he really wanted to perform for them. In the same way, Hamilton appears to have the power of the people behind him -¬ it was remarkable how the Italian fans were cheering for him during the race and afterwards.

How Hamilton broke Rosberg

When Hamilton dropped back at the start, I thought: "That's it. Nico won't be beaten now." But he was ¬and beaten well. It might be hard for people who are not Formula 1 drivers to appreciate just what Rosberg was going through as Hamilton closed in on him at Monza. Pressure plays with your mind. You start to have too much time to think about what is coming up, especially at somewhere like Monza, where there are long straights and you are looking at your braking point. It's a bit like when a tennis player is waiting for a high ball to come down for an 'easy' smash, and then he misses the shot. Instead of it being a subconscious thing coming from the cerebellum at the back of your head, it's a frontal-lobe, conscious-thought thing. That's what pressure is. You become conscious of the consequences. Driving a racing car quickly is more about reaction than action. Braking and turning is the methodical part of what we do. What separates the greats is that they are so reactive through the corner. They feel the slide before it comes, correct, position the car and they're gone.
The merely good ones tick the boxes, but they've been so methodical they've lost half a tenth of a second. That's not a lot, but put it together around 10 corners of the race track and suddenly you're half a second off the pace.

Rosberg will have been thinking in that race: "OK, I've got a lead, it's looking positive." Then, suddenly, it will have been, "What? He's second?" And then: "And now he's catching me?"You start thinking about that, rather than driving the car. And that's how you end up making mistakes, such as the two Rosberg made in the race.

What next?

Hamilton already has great confidence that he is a better racing driver than Rosberg, that his speed will win the day.

“As much as Rosberg's camp will not like to hear it, this confirms my personal opinion that while Rosberg is a very fast racing driver, with a more cerebral approach, Hamilton is a marginally faster driver and an instinctively better racer." As for Rosberg, it is going to be fascinating to see how he bounces back from this. He has question marks over his speed and wheel-to-wheel racing, and on top of that the public are not responding to him. That's not an easy place to be.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/29110462

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