Formula 1: Overglorifying Lewis Hamilton’s Hungary win an insult to his career

As impressive as it was, overglorifying Lewis Hamilton’s comeback in the Hungarian Grand Prix is really nothing more than an unintentional yet clear insult to his Formula 1 career.

After running down polesitter Max Verstappen of Aston Martin Red Bull Racing with under four laps remaining in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport Lewis Hamilton added yet another victory to his career Formula 1 win total. This victory was his series-high eighth victory of the 2019 season through the 21-race season’s first 12 races.

Hamilton now ranks second on the all-time Formula 1 wins list with 81 victories, trailing recordholder Michael Schumacher by just 10 wins.

He is 29 wins clear of Sebastian Vettel in third place on this list. In fact, he has earned more wins since the start of the 2014 season (59) than Vettel has in his career (52). Hamilton is also tied for second on the all-time Formula 1 championships list with Juan Manuel Fangio with five titles, again trailing only Schumacher, the sport’s lone seven-time champion.

Hamilton’s Hungarian Grand Prix victory was impressive. In fact, since the 2018 season began, the 34-year-old Briton has now earned 19 victories, and he earned his most recent victory with what was only his second true “winning pass” during this span.

But the overglorification that this win has received is nothing more than an unintentional yet clear insult to his brilliant Formula 1 career.

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I’ve seen varying levels of high praise for this impressive victory. It has been called the best drive of Hamilton’s career, it has been praised as Hamilton reaching new heights, and it has been said that he is the only driver who could have possibly pulled it off.

So what actually happened?

Verstappen started this 70-lap race around the 14-turn, 2.722-mile (4.381-kilometer) Hungaroring road course in Mogyorod, Hungary from the pole position, two positions ahead of Hamilton in third place. Both drivers started on medium tires.

Hamilton quickly got around teammate Valtteri Bottas for second place, and he stayed close to Verstappen, never falling much farther than two seconds behind him before the 21-year-old Dutchman came into the pits on lap 26 for hard tires.

Six laps later, Hamilton came into the pits for hard tires. When he came back out onto the track, he trailed Verstappen by 6.437 seconds. But on six-lap newer tires and a car that demonstrated it had slightly better race pace on the first stint, he was able to catch Verstappen. He nearly passed him on a few occasions, but Verstappen was able to keep him at bay.

Trailing Verstappen by 1.167 seconds as lap 49 began, Hamilton came into the pits for a second time, catching pretty much everybody by surprise, most notably Red Bull Racing. Mercedes put him on medium tires that were 23 laps newer than Verstappen’s hard tires.

With less than 22 laps remaining, Hamilton emerged from the pits 21.275 seconds behind Verstappen. Red Bull Racing had the chance to pit Verstappen on the following lap to put him on newer tires and likely keep him just in front of Hamilton, but they opted not to.

The stage was set.

But the question was never “Will Hamilton beat Verstappen?” or “Will Verstappen hold off Hamilton?” as though it would come down to an all-out dogfight. At this point, a dogfight was out of the question.

The question was “Does Hamilton have enough time to catch Verstappen?”

Because if he did, he was going to blow by him as if he was driving a Williams.

Sure enough, with under four laps remaining, Verstappen had nothing for Hamilton when Hamilton approached him on the outside heading into turn one on his faster, softer and 23-lap newer tires.

Hamilton coasted away. A few corners later, he already led the race by 2.363 seconds.

At this point in the race, Verstappen didn’t have any tires left, and with his chance for a win out the window but third place nowhere in sight, he ended up coming into the pits for a free pit stop to put on soft tires so that he could record the fastest lap time of the race, which he did with ease.

It’s undeniable that this was an amazing drive by one of the sport’s legends. Running down the leader from that far behind is a tall order, and while Hamilton and Mercedes have somewhat become known for billing themselves as the underdogs even as heavy favorites, for once this season, they had a legitimate reason to believe that it may not work.

But if blowing by a driver in a less powerful car while using faster and 23-lap newer tires is “the battle we’ve been waiting for” between Formula 1‘s top two drivers and it “lived up to its billing”, then we got robbed, and if beating Max Verstappen in this particular instance illustrated a “new height” by Lewis Hamilton and it was the “best drive of his career”, then his career is nowhere near as good as we’ve been led to believe it is.

And that’s just it; his career has been as good as we’ve been led to believe, if not better, which is exactly why the hype train surrounding this victory is nothing shy of an unintentional yet clear insult to that career.

With all things considered, this was nowhere close to being Hamilton’s best performance.