Formula One driver Daniel Ricciardo has attributed most of the recent success had by four-time champion Lewis Hamilton to his car.
Lewis Hamilton, 32, is coming off of a 2017 Formula One season during which he won his fourth career championship in his 11-year career. The title was also his third in the last four seasons, a four-year span during which he won 40 races, an all-time record.
But despite now being on a 3rd place tie on the all-time championships list with four behind only Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio and trailing only the great Schumacher in career victories with 62, Hamilton hasn’t exactly convinced everybody that he is the great driver that most people have come to think he is.
In fact, Hamilton hasn’t even convinced the whole Formula One field, which he has basically steamrolled over the past few seasons, winning 40 of the 79 races since the start of the 2014 season, of that.
Fellow Formula One driver Daniel Ricciardo, 28, who drives for Red Bull Racing, had this to say according to Express.co.uk about Hamilton’s recent success, largely attributing that success to the fact that he drives for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport and his cars have been both extremely fast and extremely reliable.
"“The car is a big part of it, but you need to be a good driver to get the equipment to the top. You need both. It’s still a bit more dominant with the car than the driver, I’d say maybe 75 percent to 25 percent.“If we make it a bit more equal by bringing the driver in a bit more and taking the equipment out then that would be better. A 50/50 would be something more realistic in the near future and hopefully that’s the case.“Even from Lewis to the guy that’s coming last, maybe the lap time says three seconds but the driver is maximum one second. We are all a lot closer than that and it would be great if we could all stay within one second with the equipment. Then the racing would be pretty fun.”"
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These comments are perhaps even more interesting with Ricciardo’s contract at Red Bull Racing set to expire at the end of next season and him being a possible and even a likely candidate to replace Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes in 2019, as Bottas’ new contract also expires at the end of the 2018 season.
If Hamilton doesn’t retire after the 2018 season, which many people have speculated that he will, and gets a contract extension for beyond next season since his contract is set to expire at that time, he and Ricciardo could end up as teammates in 2019 in essentially equal equipment. If that happens, Ricciardo would have the chance to prove his point.
Next: Who is the greatest Formula One driver of all-time?
We all know that success Formula One is based largely on equipment, as certain cars are definitely faster than others. But would Daniel Ricciardo actually match up to four-time champion Lewis Hamilton if he were driving an equally strong car? We may very well find that out in 2019.